Ugly
by Blaithin-mae
Summary: The day he saw them, naked limbs twisted together and his little dark haired cousin writhing beneath the blond boy was the day Dudley realised that some pretty things could be ugly. Draco/Harry. Onesided Dudley/Harry
1. Chapter 1

**Ugly**

_The day he saw them, naked limbs twisted together and his little dark haired cousin writhing beneath the blond boy was the day Dudley realised that some pretty things could be ugly. Draco/Harry, (onesided Dudley/Harry and little Harry/Ginny)_

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Dudley Dursley was ugly.

He had always been ugly. Maybe not as a baby or a toddler; youth and size had saved him back then but neither had lasted long.

He didn't care all that much anymore; aesthetics were something he valued in others instead and made little effort to better his appearance; Dudley was ugly and he knew it. He had known it when the kindergarten teacher refused to touch him, unable to make herself hold him like she did with his skinny little runt of a cousin. He had known it when the other children laughed because he was fat and yelled vicious, childish insults across freezing playgrounds, far away from adult intervention.

He had cried many bitter tears as small boy over his appearance and it didn't matter how many times his father slapped his on his back and told him what a strapping young man he was or how long his mother would beam at him and coo about his good looks, their opinions just weren't the ones that mattered. And Harry, his pale faced, little cousin had always been there in the distance, his face marred by a look of simple incredulity that stabbed the point home with brutal innocence.

Dudley had stopped really crying early on. He was ugly on the outside by nature and made ugly on the inside by nurture. He hated and loathed and resented and made sure everyone knew it. His teachers didn't have to focus on his fat wobbling body anymore; he broke things and screamed tantrums on the floors, he bullied the other children and used his every growing girth to force them into submission. The children, suddenly weren't focused on his appearance anymore and he was surrounded by a group of equally ugly and previously lonely boys who were happy to belong, even if it meant that they had to rip apart Carl's new comic, or steal Lucy's gel pens or break Harry's wrist.

His parents were glass statues of frozen smiles and ignored the hissing disgust of teachers and parents alike with calm disregard; their son wasn't the victim anymore and they would rather he be the culprit than crying into his pillow at night. Dudley, in all his resentful, unhealthy glory blossomed with vicious self confidence and by the time he was nine was so firmly established in his role as an all out bully he had forgotten he had ever been any different. He was showered with suffocating love and affection at home while violence and anger was the only way he found attention anywhere else. He revelled in the disgusted fascination he received from people; the pretty people who otherwise wouldn't have looked at him. He hated them and loved them, wanting so much to be one of them even while he tried to tear them apart.

Harry, in contrast, had always been one of the pretty people.

He shouldn't have been with those ridiculous bug glasses and his hair that looked like he had torn at with a pair of scissors, but he did. Dudley knew it as a little kid and so did parents and even though he couldn't have explained anything when he was younger when he looked back on it, he saw that Harry's abuse was somehow, in a twisted, contorted way, somewhat linked to him. His parents looked at him and looked at Harry and hated Harry for being different...better.

He suspected his mother was seeing her own childhood mirrored in theirs; her pretty, clever, special sister reflected in Harry's big green gem eyes. She was cruel in her retribution and Harry; his little dark haired cousin was a silent, hunched waif that watched them with condemning eyes. He shouldn't have been pretty in Dudley's old clothes, too short and so skinny his arms and legs looked like twigs and his cheekbones made butter knife sharp beneath his skin, but he did. Harry always did carry the waif look well.

He went to kindergarten looking like a kicked puppy and they ate him up. Dudley hadn't really hated his cousin till then. Till he was shunted and pushed aside and Harry was babied and adored by those whom looked at him with distaste, and Harry, Harry just glanced at him and there wasn't even any emotion in his canvass of a face. For once Harry was better than him, cleverer, kinder, better and he knew it and so did Harry. Dudley was stupid, he struggled with his work and wasn't redeemed by childish cuteness to earn any help, he was abandoned for more intelligent, prettier children and it was a new and painful experience.

Dudley wanted attention from the pretty people and he wanted it most from Harry. His cousin had belonged to him when they were little and he had expected him to belong to him when they'd gone to school. But school had become a sanctuary for Harry and a torture for Dudley, it was all wrong. The only way he got attention from anyone there, was violence and so he saved his worse for Harry. His cousin looked at him with hate from then on, no matter where they were and that was enough for Dudley. They grew older and Dudley loved to invent ways to hurt Harry, because by hurting his pretty, angel faced cousin he was hurting all those other pretty, angel faced people who rejected him and hated him for being different.

His parents did nothing to help Harry, they tolerated and even encouraged Dudley's abuse of the boy. His mother had her cruel and unchanging hatred for his cousin but it was his father, with his clumsy, brutal disgust that taught Dudley most. Harry was a poster child for abuse when they were little; he was a rainbow of bruises and cuts and those big green eyes were burning with unspoken emotion. He never answered back to Dudley at home within reach of his parents' retribution, he didn't in school either but there was always someone who spoke up in his place.

Dudley didn't understand it back then. Harry seemed to attract people like flies; it wasn't just the teachers, through he always a favourite, it was the other children as well. Harry was kind and open and honest and it spoke to people even back then. Dudley was jealous, of Harry or of his friends he didn't know but he was sick with it all the same. In his clumsy, violent manner he made it clear that Harry was his and only his and soon the others their age were avoiding his tiny battered cousin shamefully, in the end more concerned with their own well being than of the boy who would have done anything for them. Harry stared up at him, skinny and weary, every fragile line of his body tense in attentive abhorrence.

He was obsessed. He had been allowed a power over another human being that shouldn't have been allowed, he held Harry completely at his mercy and those big green eyes were welling up with hate just for him, focused utterly on Dudley and that was all Dudley really wanted.

Harry hated and hated and Dudley obsessed and obsessed.

It should have stayed the same, secondary school stretched out before them and even though they wouldn't be going to the same place; Harry would still be waiting, hating, in his second hand clothes and bug glasses for Dudley at home. Ready to give him all his attention, in his angry, powerless way. Dudley thought it was brilliant and his cousin who seemed smaller and thinner every week was horrified as his life stretched endless and painful before him.

Then it had all changed and Harry was gone, whisked away like magic. By magic. His name became taboo around the house and Dudley was the single child of an ordinary family, left with his familiar resentment and his band of savage, vicious followers who were all as angry and lonely as he was. Dudley didn't even care that much and that was the truth of the matter, he was too engulfed by his own life; where he found himself fighting for position of top dog.

He was fat and tall for his age and acuminated a band of loyal, ugly boys, who wanted to hate the pretty people as much as Dudley did. But they were barely in double figures and there were prowling youths who were built like houses and could legally drink, watching them with a barely controlled dark humour that made Dudley feel very small and childish. His resentment had almost faded away in his strange rush of fear at the hint of the real world. But then summer came and he was returned to his frozen world of no rules and pats on the back and Harry was there.

He was less emaciated than he had been in years and looked at them all with a strange wide eyed knowledge that his father had taken as superiority and beaten him for, and his mother had taken as arrogance and starved him for. Dudley probably knew best; Harry had seen the beginnings of the 'true' world too; it had just altered him in more obvious ways. The ropes that bound them were renewed and Dudley was almost panting for his attention by the end of summer because Harry knew and he wasn't afraid.

It was probably Dudley's first glimpse at Harry; the ever brave and utterly stupid and forever beautiful Harry. He could see why those people had been so eager to take him as their saviour.

The next year came and went in much the same fashion, except now they weren't the smallest anymore and Dudley terrorised the new firstes with almost sadistic glee. He was expelled for two weeks near Christmas and came back a legend; no one remembered what he had done and it didn't matter, he was already _known_. The next year was one smooth ride away and he flew with immeasurable ease into it, the summer unaccountable and Harry, reassuringly, the same as ever. Dudley liked consistency.

Third year was mostly the same despite the fact that now they were all 'teenagers'. It seemed like a big deal but it wasn't because the lonely, ugly boys were still caught up in their hate and anger and didn't realise till near the end of the year that there were more interesting and worse ways in which to rebel. Dudley got drunk for the first time when he was thirteen; him and his mates sipped at cider and fell about a kiddies playground, swinging dizzy on roundabouts and falling off swings. They staggered home and broke the glass window of a bus shelter. His parents didn't say anything when he was sick during the night and didn't leave his bed the next day, but his mother's eyes were red and swollen. Dudley thought it was brilliant, even better than hurting Harry.

Smeltings' was an all boys school but there were enough girls around his estate that it didn't matter and they would come out at night with him and Piers and sit on the frosty seats of the playground, gulping out of those big 2 litre bottles of coke that weren't filled with coke anymore. He kissed a girl when he fourteen, she was a horse-faced tart, who swore too much and spat at a homeless person as they went home. He pulled her to him with an awkward fumble and their lips met in a sloppy drunken kiss, Dudley still considered it the worse kiss he ever had.

By the time summer came he was expectant as he waited for his cousin, ready to see the gleam of lusty knowledge in his face but Harry, for the first time, disappointed him. His innocence was a big, shinning jewel in his eyes and Dudley was a little disgusted by both of them. He beat on him so hard that summer he was surprised Harry looked almost normal when those people came for him.

They crowded in their living room, all red hair and long limbs and freckles and they were the pretty people once again giving him looks of utter revulsion as they petted and adored his little scrawny cousin. Harry looked doll like next to them, small and bird boned and even the girl, who was hanging off his arm glowing with prettiness, looked less fragile than he did. Dudley hated them and hated Harry most of all.

The next two years in his education were meant to be important, they were GCSEs and the teachers spent the first month stressing how important and how much depended on getting good results. Some people panicked, most laughed and ignored the teachers and continued on in childish fashion because they were little more than children and really didn't give a shit about their future. Dudley was the ringleader. He got expelled for two months that year and this time no one thought it was brilliant, they simply expected it and that made him so angry he could feel his blood boil, even if he didn't know exactly why.

He was fatter and uglier than ever and all he could think about was his small thin cousin and the horse faced girl who'd spat at a tramp. He didn't keep any notes and lost all his text books and his parents fretted something awful, half focused on him and half ready for his sorry excuse of a relative to return home in all his pretty, clever, brilliant glory.

Dudley lost his virginity the night before Harry came home, it was shit. The girl was fat as well and they moved like slugs against each other, he came too quickly and she was blank faced and bored. They barely said two words to each other before and never said anything afterwards. Dudley walked home with a sort of swagger that disappeared when he saw his dad beating his cousin against the linoleum of the kitchen floor. He glanced at the rag doll body and his father's tomato red face and went to bed, angry and resentful because no one had seen him and his parents who should have and always had before were altogether too focused on his useless, innocent brat of a relative.

He didn't get Harry's attention till the next day, he was slumped outside, every tiny movement so obviously laced with pain it should have been agony to watch, he spun around with those wary, pretty, green gem eyes. He didn't look so innocent now but Dudley still thought he'd kept the innocence that he himself had lost, the kind you chose to lose.

"What Dudley?" he'd asked; shovel raised almost defensively between them.

Dudley had sneered angrily and looked him over contemptuously. Except Harry wasn't just a little bit pretty anymore, he was a lot pretty, his features a paradoxical mixture of starved edges and smooth curves. His eyes were brilliantly green beneath his dark mane of hair; he was longer, leaner and still fragile like spun glass; ready to shatter into a thousand pieces beneath Dudley's hands. His face was white against the blue bruise that stood proudly across the slope of his cheek and Dudley wanted to trace the edges of it, pet the outer yellow and dig his fingers into the central purple.

He looked at Harry with a twin mixture of disgust and disturbance and walked away once more, while Harry watched him with bewildered confusion and returned to his work.

Obsession with Harry wasn't new but this kind of obsession wasn't familiar at all. Dudley watched him greedily, angrily. He hated him and hit him and wanted so badly to touch the softness of his lips all at the same time. Harry sickened him and he sickened himself. He was almost relieved when summer was over and he went back to safeness of Smeltings.

He looked at the other boys in his year and they weren't Harry. Dudley had never been more relieved than he was at that revelation. He didn't want boys, he wanted Harry, he wanted a pretty person and Harry had been the only one he had ever even partially owned. He pushed any thoughts of his cousin out of his head, only unwilling indulgencing in his dreams and he found himself sticky and uncomfortable the next morning. Horse faced girl had disappeared into the past, along with the fat slug girl and a few others followed. They were ugly girls too, who swore too much and drank till they couldn't move and threw up into street grids, he had his cock sucked in toilets and fucked one girl over the cool metal bars of a playground roundabout.

He hated and loved every minute of it. Piers was his constant sneering companion though it all and they shared their first joint together; a hastily rolled pieced of shit that was limp and wet between his fat fingers. Weed knocked him out almost instantly and ecstasy gave him a pill dick so he went back to alcohol. He scraped a few GCSEs and they felt as insignificant as they had when they'd first began; he was allowed to stay for his A levels, because in the end money mattered. He frowned when his mum cried and promised he'd re-sit his English and maths.

Summer came too soon and Harry was back; beautiful and untouchable, green gem eyes a little broken and all the more tempting. He was bird bones and paper skin beneath Dudley's fists. So weak and useless it made him want to cry; or at least he thought so, there were some things Harry was strong against.

He called them dementors but Dudley didn't really care. He sat and shivered and felt pathetic and utterly wretched. Harry watched him with a guileless concern that was laughable because he really shouldn't have felt anything other than vindication, but that was Harry all over. He could always muster up concern for anyone who was hurt, anyone who wasn't. Dudley realised then, that Harry was one of those few people who was pretty on the inside as well as the outside and if anything his obsession grew. His cousin was marvellous really and he kind of knew it.

He found out with a start that this would be the last summer they had together and that Harry wouldn't have to come back to them next year. He didn't blame him, he was a patch work of bruises and abrasions after the dementor incident; his father blamed the black haired youth even though he'd obviously saved Dudley's life. Dudley didn't hit him again though, he just watched, trying to burn the image of his thin, angel faced cousin into his mind. Panic at the thought of losing him clawed at his chest and once when Harry had fallen asleep; exhausted by too much physical labour and too little food, he pressed his lips against that soft coloured mouth. Harry's lips were red hot and Dudley felt physically sick as he stared down into his scarred face.

He went out and drank and smoked and fucked a girl with a gap between her two front teeth until the memory was blurred into hazy vagueness. Harry was gone a week later and Dudley was glad, he was tired with his obsession.

A levels were just like GCSEs, he hated them and wasn't any good at them either. He never did re-sit English or maths and struggled vainly through a harder syllabus with a strange dogged determination. Piers had fled the education system as soon as he could and Dudley was left with only a handful of empty friendships that left a bitter taste in his mouth. His oldest friend was working in a chippy near his estate and they still hung out some; the other boy was as disillusioned as he was and they spent evenings smoking together in silence, cold air and smoke and self pity palpable in between them.

"Shit. It's all fucking, empty shit" Pier's was rat faced and black eyed in the darkness of the night and Dudley was inclined to agree with him. He passed the spliff back to him, the edges already discoloured sickly brown.

His days didn't stay empty, he wished they had but everything changed again and at first Dudley thought it was the best thing that could have happened. Harry came back; he stood in their kitchen out of place with dirt scuffed clothes and his beautiful, serious face.

"You need to come with me"

His father choked and roared and choked some more and Dudley tried to keep his eyes on Harry's face as he'd asked why.

"There are people, bad people. They want to kill me, hurt me and they're going to come after you, because of me." He looked ill with guilt at that and once again Dudley was reminded of Harry's truly pretty insides. They hated him, his parents/ himself, they had hurt and bullied and starved and beaten him for years and here he was, stood all tense lines of overwhelming guilt trying to save them.

His Mum cried a bit and his Walrus-Father took a swipe at Harry's head; hard enough to send him staggering against the kitchen sink. Dudley held out a hand and yanked Harry upright; his small wrist painfully thin and his pulse fluttering beneath his fat sausage fingers. "Ok" he'd said and they'd packed their bags.

They took a portkey and every single one of them fell in crumpled awkwardness to the tarmacked road. Even Harry, who was sprawled out, limbs stretched and bent in a way that accented the length of his legs and the soft lines of torso. Dudley felt sick and remembered that night when he'd pressed a kiss to his sleeping cousin's lip with a mixture of want and disgust. They followed Harry into the safe-house, which looked like it was about to fall apart any minute. A portrait screamed at them and his mother sobbed into the crook of Father's arms. Vernon was ash white and looked torn between beating Harry and crying himself.

"Sorry" Harry mumbled and waved his wand at the screeching woman; curtains slammed shut across her leaving the narrow corridor unbearable silent. "I'm back" he called finally, slinging a nervous glance over his shoulder at them, Dudley thought it was painfully funny in a way that wasn't really funny at all and was all the more painful for it.

There was a stamped of people and Harry was washed away by the other pretty people, the red-haired girl that Dudley remembered gave them a truly hateful glance and pressed herself against his cousin. Pretty people all together and facing the fat, ugly, cruel Dursleys; Harry's bright gem eyes were distant as he was dragged away and Dudley had never longed for his cousin as he did in that moment; at the mercy of too many pairs of accusing and abhorring stares.

They knew. Knew that they had hated and abused Harry, they knew the scars that had been left on him, one of their pretty people, and they would seek retribution like Petunia had done all those years before. His mother thought so as well and sobbed harder, her face blotchy and her eyes red and swollen almost completely shut.

"Come on then Durselys" their surname was hissed like a curse "we'll show you your room"

There was an unspoken agreement between him and his father and they sandwiched his crying mother in between them, clutching at one of her bony hands each.

They were still family after all.

The house was a nightmare, musty and dust filled. The lights were dim and flickered and everything was black and unloved; creaking with old age and neglect. It was a contrast to the redheaded family who inhabited it; forever loud and loving, except of course to the Durselys. The three of them were placed at the top of the house, away from everyone else; his parents shared a moth bitten bed and Dudley was forced to sleep on a too small, too narrow cot that one of the freckled twins had transformed from a curtain for him. His parents rarely left that damp, dark room but he couldn't stand it. He went in search of Harry.

Harry most definitely didn't have time for him now, it was a fist around his heart every time he realised and he would scowl hatefully at the flirtatious redheaded girl or the older soft eyed man who held Harry's narrow shoulder tenderly like a father. Harry barely said two words to him but their shared history was heavy and nasty between them and that, at least made it certain he would always be acknowledged willing or not by Harry.

He watched his little cousin, smiling, laughing and loved, sketching out a picture of the life he had led away from them, away from him. His friends Hermione and Ron always either side of him, framing his china doll cousin and the wolf man who was even nice to the Dursleys, the Weasleys who loved Harry as a son and Ginny who loved Harry with every single fibre of her being. They were all Harry's, belonged to him as surely as he had once belonged to Dudley. Except they had chosen to belong to his scrawny cousin and Harry with his bright gem eyes knew it. He watched them sometimes, strength in every tendon of his being; he was the embodiment of fearless determination and selfless sacrifice. Dudley wished he could mimic that, but he didn't think mimicry would be enough.

Harry was breathtaking and Dudley was sucked full force back into his obsession and Harry with his left over unease and remembered hate paid just enough attention to sate his hunger.

Then _he_ came.

Dudley had never known real hate before he came. A white-haired, paled-skinned devil; he was cut from marble and burning with emotion all at the same time. He had stepped through a fireplace of all things, right into the centre of the living room, his bone white face titled up in arrogance.

"Malfoy" Harry had all but leapt at him and Dudley was sure he could see crystal tears heavy on his lashes as he did so. The white haired youth had lost all pretence of superiority and had grappled with his skinny little cousin; he was a good few inches taller than Harry but was the first to fall to floor and Harry was on his like a savage animal; his grief so tangible Dudley's tongue felt heavy in his mouth. He clawed and punched and scratched and his face was streaked with lines of tears.

Dudley grabbed at his waist, ripping the twisting body away from the pointy faced youth and pressing Harry against him with greedy possession. The small, thin body was perfect for one brilliant moment and Harry leant wearily against him, his small, pretty face pressed into Dudley's fat, ugly shoulder. Harry's narrow back shook and his hands were fisted in the loose material of his shirt and Dudley wanted to press his lips against Harry mouth once again and almost didn't care anymore how weird or sick that made him. It was Harry and his angry made him flush and shake against him.

"Harry!" Hermione's screech broke the perfect moment.

"It's not what you think, he's good" she cried and Harry was snagged from the possessive circle of his arms, the girl throwing a hateful glare at him as she held the green eyed boy close.

His cousin was being led out of the dusty, moth eaten living room like a puppy; his thin arms limp at his sides and his eyes darting one final, utterly loathsome look at the pale youth who was staggering to his feet, a half sneering grin on his face. "Dumbledore..." Harry muttered and the rest of the conversation was swallowed by the house as they left the room. Dudley was captured by a cruel metal stare.

The blonde boy had blood dripping from his nose and mouth and with a knowing smirk, he smeared it across his face, painting his bottom lip crimson. "Potter eh? I'd like to say you can do better but I be lying. Hell, a rat could do better than you"

This boy, he had realised was another pretty person, bitter and twisted but still one of them and that gave him a connection to Harry, even if they didn't know it yet. Dudley had made to leap at him but there was a wand pressed against the flabby skin of his neck, digging with barely there pressure into his flesh. His muscles froze and he stared wide eyed at the youth, he was shorter than Dudley, slender and sharp edged and lack of sleep had left faint smudges beneath metallic eyes. He was vicious and lonely and resentful and Dudley was afraid of him.

"Potter, eh?" he sneered again, his features twisting before he sniggered, cackled and snorted in Dudley's face and left the room; cruel laughter echoing through the halls. Dudley had hated him with unreserved passion from then on.

He was never sure what the youth had done but Harry hated him, truly hated him and even when his cousin was trying to be civil his eyes were bright with abhorrence just like they had used to be for him. Harry, who could forgive anyone for anything as long as it was a crime against him struggled with his feelings for this boy and Dudley found them rolling about on the floor; bloody and bruised hundreds of times in those first couple of weeks.

His cousin's attention was solely focused on the boy, he had none left for anyone else and Dudley who was less than the rest of them was completely ignored. He loathed the boy for that, the boy who he quickly found was called Draco Malfoy and was about as rich as they came. He had a razor blade tongue and tore everyone to pieces without even moving, except Harry, because Harry was special, even to him to and he threw himself with equal vigour into their crude wrestling matches. Dudley watched those pale hands gripping and bruising his cousin's paper skin with sick jealousy and what was worse was that Draco would throw him a single dagger filled smirk because he knew exactly what Dudley was thinking.

To make it worse, somehow, Draco ended up lodging in a room with him, apparently no one else could bear to live with him and Dudley and Draco found themselves staring with hatred and cruel bemused respectively at each other as they pushed their way through into the room. Their bedroom was box like and damp with age and he perched on the edge of the bed trying not to touch anything.

"I wish I'd gone to Azkaban it might have actually been nicer there" Draco hissed and glared at the grey coloured bed as if it were to blame for the world's faults. That silvery gaze that Dudley was beginning to dread slid across to him, looking at him with his fat body and ugly face. "At least I wouldn't have to share a cell with an obese mudman."

He didn't actually understand a lot of what Draco said, the boy seemed to speak in code but he understood well enough that it was an insult and launched himself across the room at the pale boy. Draco wasn't that much bigger than his cousin really and it was almost like beating up Harry, except Harry had never bit him or tried to knee him in the balls; he was vicious in ways Harry would never be. But Dudley had the benefit of size and weight and had snagged that pale neck into a punishing head lock; hissing into his ear angrily.

The boy went limp in his grasp and started to laugh. Laugh until he was shaking with perverse amusement, his hands clawed at the thread bare carpet beneath them, his eyes were watering and that was how Harry found them.

He might have been about Draco's size but always managed to look waifish and breakable in a way that the pale youth never did. He was painfully thin as always and his neck despite it creaminess was covered in gold as if someone had smeared glitter along the lines of his throat. Dudley's grip on Draco tightened and those silver eyes glanced from one to the other, smirking.

"Dudley, stop, you're going to hurt him!" Harry's fingers were poker hot as he tore open the vice of his arms and dragged Draco, with a strange rough concern, to his feet. Draco's hand lingered on Harry's arms, pale fingers stroking the overly large red jumper he wore. Dudley scowled and stumbled heavily upright. "He started it; he called me a mud man and said I was a rat"

Harry's face was a canvass of distaste and concern as he looked between the two of them and he wasn't sure which was meant for him and which was meant for Draco. His cousin was tiny between them and their eyes met over his wild mane of hair with acknowledged dislike.

"You'll never guess what your jelly mudman thinks of you, Potter." The boy's mouth was flushed with blood and Dudley aimed a punch at it, fully intending to make him bleed. Harry jumped into action and was wedged into between their warring figures, black haired next to their shades of blond and so different than their equally selfish, jealous personalities.

"Malfoy, don't call my cousin that" Harry's voice had them both snapping to listen to him "and Dudley please don't fight with people. Everyone else here can do magic and you'll get hurt."

His back was a tense line he left the room and Draco was staring at Dudley with something akin to disbelief. "Cousin? He's your bloody cousin?" He folded himself with lazy elegance onto that grey, moth eaten bed looking like ice and diamonds and started to laugh again "You're bloody sick, mate. You're lusting after your cousin. Harry bloody Potter got's a whale hard for him."

"I'm not lusting after him," Dudley snarled.

Draco laughed harder and threw himself backwards, pale hair haloing his twisting features. "It's ridiculous. You're ridiculous. Sodding, bastard Potter."

Dudley was feeling sicker with every word out of that pale thin mouth and he stood and left, Draco's laughter still ringing around him.

The problem was; Draco and Dudley were entirely too alike. They had been pampered by their parents and despised by everyone else. Dudley had made himself a bully with his firsts, eating and eating until he was so physically imposing that no one dared challenge him. But Draco had gone a step better. The pale boy would never be as tall or as strong as Dudley and instead had made his words his weapons, he saw people; saw the truth of people and used that with shameless military precision to rip them to shreds. That was probably why Dudley was so uncomfortable around him, he had seen so easily what everyone else was oblivious too and it hung over them like a blade. He didn't know why Draco didn't tell Harry in those early days, they fought enough and when Draco and Harry's battle faded, Draco and Dudley's rose with doubled cruelty and viciousness in its place. Harry was their buffer, throwing himself between them without an ounce of self preservation when it went too far. He was the only one they listened to; small, dark haired and so pure it hurt to look at him.

Dudley suspected Draco saw Harry too; the pale boy would look at his cousin sometimes, troubled by the unfamiliarity of someone that good, that pretty on the inside as well as the outside. Dudley was silently vindicated, he had known Harry first, before Draco, before the lot of them and some part of the pretty faced boy would always be his and his alone. He held a part of Harry they couldn't touch.

At least for a while.

* * *

_This was meant to be a one shot, but it got really long, I'm was already on the 18 page mark and it didn't look like it was going to end any time soon. So I give you the first 10 pages and hold the next lot hostage._

_Reviews are food for my inner Dudley, even if they only say hello._


	2. Chapter 2

**UGLY**

**Chapter Two**

Time, which for Dudley had always been defined in easy, neat blocks of school and summers, was suddenly a blurred evermore, stretching out endlessly at either side of the present.

He didn't know how long he spent there but it had felt like a lifetime. His parents kept to themselves; cooped up in their bedroom at the top of the house away from the freakishness. The redheaded family hissed about ingratitude and he could hear his mother's sobs through the cardboard thin walls during the night.

His own presence seemed to have been easier to accept or at least ignore and he wondered the dark halls lonely and uncomfortable, his only respite; his brief and violent encounters with an ever smirking Draco and sometimes Harry. Harry's pity was a hard pill to swallow; the boy gave weak, watery smiles and even tried to start a conversation once or twice. Dudley had been vehement in his refusal to talk to his cousin and punched him hard enough to break ribs, Harry's eyes shone in pain and there wasn't a single glimmer of hatred in them anymore. Dudley was bewildered and bewitched in equal measure.

He didn't know what his cousin was doing but he was always whispering and plotting with the older, grizzled men that flowed through the house; they looked at him like a prophet come to save them all. Actually everyone in that stupid house held the pretty, tiny boy up on some sort of pedestal, they just seemed to assume he would take care of things and Dudley thought they were all mad, Harry looked tired and fragile and their expectant eyes made his jaw tighten under the pressure. Whatever the hell it was that they wanted, Harry was always busy because of it and only released during the evenings and even then he was surrounded by friends and fatherly figures.

Dudley had to content with watching him from a distance or fighting with Draco hard enough until Harry had to physically tear them apart. The pale haired boy found this endlessly amusing, but he threw himself as eagerly as ever into their fights and threw slanted blade sharp smiles that were anything but friendly over Harry's head as he jammed himself in between their fists.

Maybe not unsurprisingly, Dudley found himself lumped into the same category as Draco; boys who were mean to Harry and therefore must be disliked. He'd overheard the bushy haired girl and the lanky redhead talking about them, sentences filled with 'Draco and Dudley' and 'they'. Draco who had been leaning against the wall outside where they were talking had sent him one of those razor edged smiles and mouthed an insult he hadn't understood, Dudley punched him hard enough to break his nose anyway, and later he came upon Harry asking one of the older members of the house if they couldn't split them up. All but pleading because he was worried they would end up hurting each other or themselves in their bitterness. Dudley had told Draco about that and they'd laughed hard enough to cry, lying on their beds, the musty grey carpet between them, it was almost amicable.

The evenings at that tall, narrow corridor-ed house fell into an easy pattern. The kitchen was the only room that was truly touched by light and that's where they all congregated. Everywhere was else damp, dark and dusty; still persevered in the past and unable to change, to adapt to the new inhabitants.

Dudley had his own chair in the left hand corner of the room, away from the main wooden table and the always busy sprawl of kitchen surfaces. The chair was half in shadow, barely in the room at all and perfectly positioned so he could watch everyone but wasn't included. They didn't want him and even if he refused to acknowledge it, the fact was too painful to push himself into the spot light when everyone hated him so blatantly, so he kept to the corner. He watched and seethed and longed and Harry was always the focus of all his feelings and emotions, he was the calm in the redheaded storm that swirled around him and Dudley couldn't help but watch him.

His cousin laughed and beamed and was happy all the time in that kitchen. It was something foreign, he'd spent his life watching Harry beaten into submission and grimly plodding his way onwards. He had never seen him actually happy. It made him burn with joy and everyone was like moths to his flame. He could see why they hated him and Draco so much when he saw Harry smile. Draco who seemed sometimes so much like Dudley, was so obviously not at these times; the pale boy was right there in the centre of things, he was a melodramatic, little attention seeker; exuberant and witty when he wanted to be and always hissing sharp stinging comments at Harry, with a double edged familiarity that hadn't been there when he first arrived.

The red-haired family scowled at him in obvious dislike but Harry would just give him a bland, untouched look and send a tart reply back and because Harry was ok with Draco, the rest of them were; even if their reactions were hesitant and forced. He guessed they didn't understand Harry and Draco's relationship anymore than he did, but they were willing to accept the boy for the dark haired youth and in the end that was what mattered. Dudley wasn't clever enough to understand Draco and his cousin's interactions; conversations that verged on insults, which were said with the crudeness of anger and the smoothness of new friendship, were things that were beyond him and he didn't like that. It was a harsh friendship, a dangerous one and it highlighted an aspect of his cousin he could never have, never indulge in, in that respect Harry was out of his league.

Draco knew it too and he would stare at Dudley, all corners and edges and superiority. Dudley really, really hated him.

Nights were long, days of emptiness were longer and those evenings; full of light and laughter and jealousy flew by in a wash of colour and bittersweet longing. At least he had his continuity, for a while anyway.

The day the wolf man went away seemed to signal another change in the dynamics of the household and Harry who had previously been the bonfire around which everyone gathered, crept away in misery and worry and tried to find solitude. He found it on the stairs, high enough in the house that no one would stumble across him apart from the Dursleys. Dudley's father aimed a kick at him that he didn't avoid and Dudley was content to reside in his room, watching Harry's small frame through the crack of his door way.

"Sulking, Potter?"

"Not now, Malfoy"

Dudley could almost see Draco's knife filled smirk; Harry face turned up in the narrow line through the door presumptively to look at him and Dudley's fists clenched into his sheets.

Draco gave a snort and proceeded to ignore his cousin. "I see you have decided to abandon the rest of the ginger haired plebeians. Good choice, if only you had done it sooner I might not consider you, brain damaged."

Harry was silent and his back was slowly rising, catching the light and making his neck glitter gold.

"Draco, please, just shut up for a while"

Draco's white face appeared in Dudley's vision and he stared, face unreadable, downward at Harry's crown for one long minute. He was repulsive in Dudley's eyes, pointy and sharp and bleached like a bone; ugly and pretty all at the same time. The boy raised his shoulder in a half hearted shrug and slid downwards next to Harry; a gap the size of Dudley in between them. The pale boy's metallic eyes were liquid mercury in the flickering hall lights.

"He'll be fine, I'm just worried"

Draco didn't say anything in return to Harry, but his cousin glanced up at him and Draco's sharp features must have been set in a way that made his silence ok.

"I had a dream about him dying and them bringing his body back. He didn't even look dead. Just pale, really pale like he was ill or cold. But he was gone and there was just a small burn mark above his heart, like a cigarette burn but that was it. He was dead and he looked like he was sleeping. I don't want any more people to die."

Draco was quiet, looking uncomfortably at his hands, "it's just a dream; Remus is tough. He won't die."

Harry's desperation to believe made Dudley sick and he found himself truly curious about Harry's world for the first time, if only so he could understand his cousin more, to make this scene between the two wizards less intimate in his eyes.

"He'll be fine" Draco repeated and rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb. "You better go; they'll think I've murdered you if you stay too long"

Even Dudley knew that wasn't what Draco wanted.

Harry nodded and hesitated, "Draco" the pale youth glanced up, eyes still soft and liquid, "Thanks and I just wanted to say I understand and I forgive you, you did what you could in a bad situation and it's not my place or anyone else to moralise that, even if I may be inclined to do so."

Draco gave a harsh brisk nod and Harry padded softly away downstairs back into the hordes of redheads. The pale boy was frowning and staring angrily at his palms, rubbing them against each other and Dudley didn't understand anything, he shifted and the transfigured bed groaned.

Draco was framed in the doorway when he glanced up, icy in his anger, "Enjoy the show did you mudman? I should turn you into a rat, a big fat creeping rat"

Dudley hissed angrily at him, half afraid of the threat.

"You make me sick, watching him, following him around." Draco continued, eyes glimmering with repulsion. "He won't ever look at you like that. How could he; you're nothing next to him"

Dudley's anger was red and hot in his eyes and he was on Draco with a swiftness he didn't know he possessed. "he's mine" he snarled, "He's mine. He's mine"

Draco was beneath him, breaking and bleeding but with a deft twist he rolled them over, a knee slamming hard enough to paralyse, into his stomach. Dudley gasped, suddenly limp and Draco's sharp bone fingers dug into his neck, and those silver eyes were burnt brilliantly silver in his blurred vision.

"He's not yours, mudblood" his voice was deceptively calm; disgust and rage dripping from the confines of a control he hadn't known the boy possessed. "Harry isn't yours, he was never yours, he'll never be yours, get it into your fat stupid head. He barely tolerates you and only some deranged moral stupidity keeps you here in his company. He's better than you and you will never have any of him. Leave him alone"

Dudley was still beneath the boy, red faced with extrusion. He was fat and ugly and stupid and the image of those steel hard eyes would forever be imprinted into his mind, even years later when everything had faded to distant, unfocused memories. Draco's face was bone white and his fingers were gripping so harshly into his skin he could barely breath. "You..." he started "Harry, you..."

Draco gave a pained noise and punched him, hard enough for his nose to crack beneath his fist and blood to spray almost humorously at them. The boy's face was ivory and crimson and he was yet again a pretty person, looking down at Dudley, being better and having more.

The boy snapped a response but Dudley didn't hear, too focused on the blanket of agony that was covering his face, he didn't even really notice when Draco got off him, stumbling away looking ill and drawn and fled from the room, Dudley was left on the grey carpet, dripping blood beneath his fingers.

Draco didn't return to their shared room that night and he was glad for that.

The fight forced an uncomfortable and awkward change in their previously simple relationship and the almost amicable fights and shared mockery of Harry abruptly ended. Instead they avoided each other, skirting around the other as if they could burn, Dudley found himself alone at night a few times a week now, he had no idea where the pale boy went and didn't really care that much, he was angry, really angry and he didn't fully understand why. Draco seemed to, though and refused to look at him, his familiar blade sharp grin unused and instead the boy would scowl at a point just past Dudley's head, looking bewildered and hateful.

Dudley tried not to care too much that the only, almost friendship he had, had dissolved so easily.

Time had a funny feel in that house, weeks felt like minutes but months felt like years. Christmas decorations sprang up in the kitchen and the already crowded room was awash with bobbing paper lights and primary colours that would leave the period child-like and claustrophobic in his memory. Even Dudley wasn't stupid enough to ask his parents about presents that year, his mother was looking old and his father weary and they were both only surviving on hate. He was pretty sure if they could they would have killed Harry, sometimes he thought he might have helped.

The pretty redheaded girl was almost desperate with longing for his cousin by December. She would corner him in the shadows of the room and sit impossibly close at his side; left alone politely by everyone else except for Dudley jealous eyes. They were surrounded by the soft white fairy lights that lined the melted edges of the kitchen, her long bright hair would slide over his glitter gold skin and he would reach up with a painful tenderness to hook the loose strands behind her ear, his hands long and gracefully and slightly blurred in jealousy tinted vision. They were unquestionably beautiful together, his dark head resting atop of her brilliantly red one, pale smooth faces that were inches away from each other as they rested wearily and those pairs of big pretty eyes that didn't spare a glance for him or anyone else in those few moments.

Dudley hated her, hated her prettiness, hated how she fitted like a jigsaw up against his cousin and how he would wrap his slender arm around her shoulders and give her that little smile that was sincere and adoring. He hated how right they looked together, of course his cousin was going to get the prettiest girl, he was the prettiest person Dudley had ever seen and Dudley had learnt long ago that pretty people ended up with more, but it didn't stop Dudley from hating them, hating and wanting till it was a mixture of strange gut churning emotions. Sometimes he would glance at just the right moment and Draco would be watching them too, his face carefully blank and eyes like shinny mirrors.

Then they would look at each other; he couldn't say what passed between them in those moments and it didn't really matter because they were both just waiting to look back at Harry anyway.

Every single one of the freaks was looking bedraggled round the edges, tired and weary enough that it left smudges around their eyes and their hair a little limp at the ends, Dudley didn't care to know what was going on, but he came upon the older red heads crying a couple of times, they looked almost ugly in those moments. Except Harry, the purple bruises left his eyes neon green and his hair had grown long enough to curl almost caressingly around the drooping folds of his collar; the dim lighting made him painfully attractive and apparently the girl Weasley thought so too. Dudley hated her maybe more than Draco sometimes.

Christmas day was a small cocoon of make-believe for everyone, bottles of alcohol and plates of food were spread across every surface, music blasted in each room and the redheaded twins led a chorus of 'Fairytale of New York', waltzing with each other around their laughing parents and pretending to argue over who had the best credentials to lead and who was condemned to take the role of the female.

Dudley face was aching with laughter and his fat stomach wobbled as he choked on dry turkey, he wished his parents were there sometimes during that night, but he didn't think they'd approve anyway so didn't linger any lasting thoughts on them. That probably said a lot about him and none of it positive, but Dudley was good at denial.

"Come on Gin" One of the twins grabbed at his sister and twirled her round, dipping her near the floor while she scoffed, red faced into her ribbons of her hair. Harry was grinning by the table; his face lit up and reflected on a dozen different crystal tumblers and Draco _wasn't_ looking as he leapt up to join in, holding out his hand for Hermione. She ended up trying to lead and they stumbled over each other till Draco stopped abruptly, pink dusting his cheeks, making him seem less sharp edged than ever

"That's it," He declared, and gave Hermione a shove into Ron's lanky frame, "take her Weaselbee, I need a woman with some experience" and he proceeded to give a dramatic bow to Mrs Weasley and led her whirling, round the kitchen table. He was taller than her but narrow and painfully young in her embrace and the older woman was smiling, seeming almost tearful as she held him close, protectively. Dudley wondered where Draco's parents were.

"Harry!" Ginny had escaped the clutches of her brother and was stood, beaming and sparkling pretty before his cousin. Her hand latched on to his wrist and Dudley could see the delicate spider-web of blue veins that traced the inside of his arm, her thumb stroked them loving. His heart clenched and his hands itched to slap her away, Harry was meant to be his.

Harry gave her a sheepish, lob-sided grin as she directed him, placing his hand on her waist and clutching at his other. He was gentle with her, spinning her around slowly and drawing her close to him as if she would break like glass if he moved too quickly. It was irritating, especially when he couldn't have been two inches taller than her and his face was as soft and delicate as his partners. Ginny seemed to love it though and Dudley wondered if his cousin could see the love that was all but burning out of her eyes. Dudley had never treated a girl like that, had never treated anyone like that, he would have been laughed at if he had, but there again none of them had ever been pretty like Harry or Ginny, they hadn't been made for that kind of gentleness.

The Weasley twins had snagged the pink haired lady and proceeded in a screaming, laughing crab walk with the tall woman stumbling between them, her hair flashing festive red and green. Hermione was leading Ron through the steps sternly and he had a face of utmost concentration as he looked down at his feet, missing the brief second of softness that flashed across his partners face. Dudley didn't hate them for that, but the longing was enough to make him sick.

"Oh, Sorry!" the three person waltz had knocked into the pretty red headed girl and she tumbled forward, sending Harry and herself to the floor. He was sprawled out languidly and she sat grinning between his knees, her hands clutching at his thighs and their forehead touching as they laughed together. Harry's eyelashes were inky feathers resting against his cheeks and Ginny's eyes were wide with trepidation.

Dudley wasn't even surprised when she leant forward that extract inch and kissed him.

They were as pretty together as he had imagined.

Harry had moved her head slightly and her lips grazed the line of his jaw, his brow was low and troubled and he turned to stare at her, mouthing something that made her shake her head apologetically. Those pretty people stared at each other, silhouetted for a long silent moment, unaware of the loud, energetic dance that had erupted around them.

The twinkling fairy lights were making the fly away strands of their hair silver and behind them, Draco was white faced and iced.

Dudley didn't say anything as he saw the boy leave the room, his mouth was too dry and he was choking on his own selfish emotions.

Draco was in their room that night, laid out across the floor, with his white hair and white skin, looking ill against the backdrop of their grey carpet. The was a bottle of Whiskey beside him and they sat and drank together, taking shots from the bottle cap until the room rocked on its axis and they managed to knock the bottle over, watching as it left a crawling bronze stain across most of the floor.

"Fuck" Dudley said.

Draco titled his head to look at him, he was supported awkwardly by the bed behind him and his eyes were disks of unfocused grey.

"Fuck" he repeated back and they started to laugh, their laughter laced with an embarrassing, shared desperation and so they laughed louder, as if they could hide their emotions in volume.

"Where's your parents, Mudblood"

Dudley didn't have the energy to care about the insult. "Upstairs, crying most likely. They really, really hate all you freaks, hate Harry" Everything always came back to Harry. He wiggled his fat fingers in Draco's face "Freaky"

Draco snorted and gave him a critical once over, "You lot are the freaks" he retorted and Dudley wasn't exactly sure who 'you lot' were anymore so he didn't hit him for the insult.

The boy scowled, hands dropping limp at his sides and glanced at Draco's bone white face and the tight lines around his eyes and mouth "Where's your parents then?"

"Prison" Draco's expression was blade sharp but his eyes were slightly glazy, betraying him; Dudley hated him too much to spare any pity. "Father's in prison and I think my mother's with the Dark Lord."

"You don't know?"

Draco started to laugh again, hard and acidic enough that his eyes were wet when he finally managed to gasp out a response. "No I don't know. They're probably dead. Probably being tortured.

He laughed again, but Dudley couldn't bring himself to laugh with him this time.

"They weren't good people, but I..." Draco voice was terribly quiet and his slur was barely noticeable "I wish..."

Dudley's fingers fiddled with the small bottle cap, rubbing against the plastic seal that still clung to the edges and stank of sickly Whiskey. His eyes were unfocused and the plastic blurred and slipped between his sweaty palms, rolling sluggishly across the damp, grey carpet. Draco was silent beside him, his breath evening out and his eyelashes pale and translucent as they fluttered against the curve of his cheek.

There were small slivery tracks down one of his face and Dudley pretended not to have noticed as he drifted into unconsciousness.

-

When he awoke the next morning Draco was gone and the house was cold and quiet, whispered murmurs echoed like ghosts below him. Ron and Hermione were curled up together on the couch in the living room, still dressed in bright red and green and looking worried and confused, Hermione was biting her lip and sighed in exasperation as he peered inside the room, her nails were torn and bitten to the cuticles, crude in their imperfection. Ron glowered at him, ears red.

"Just fuck off Dursley" Ron snapped and stood up to force him out the room, Ron was massive in a lanky, unfinished kind of way and Dudley was in no mood to fight. He shrugged and turned around, feeling only the familiar mixture of loneliness and resentment.

"Maybe he'd just confused, what with Voldermort and everything" Hermione's voice was swallowed by space as he turned the corner and went towards the kitchen, he could hear Draco's mocking laugh a mile off and followed it because he wasn't sure what else he should do.

"Merlin, you're pathetic" the boy scoffed as Dudley entered. He was stood with a strange lazy tension, facing off with a fuming Ginny. Her pretty eyes flashed over at him and her cheeks were bright with humiliation.

"Shut up Malfoy, what do you know about anything?"

Draco sent her a vicious smirk "You're the one who's been rejected by Scarhead, on Christmas day as well, so apparently, more than you do"

Dudley stared in confusion and some sort of desperate longing, but Harry would never reject Ginny. She was so pretty, they both were, how could they not be together?

Ginny looked like she was about to cry, "Shut up!" she screamed, "Just Shut up, your own parents abandoned you; what could you know of love"

Draco looked murderous, his fists twitched at his sides and blade filled grin had disappeared into a thin hard line of pale lips.

Dudley wondered if she knew Draco's parents were probably dead, he wondered if she even cared. He didn't think he or Draco would have done, but somehow that made it all the more worse. Harry would have never said anything like that either way.

"He'll never love you, he's had the chance for years and he's never managed it yet." Draco was calm when he was really angry "You look ridiculous, panting after him like a bitch in heat and he doesn't even notice does he? You're a joke, everyone can see it apart from you. It's embarrassing."

Ginny was as red as her hair and her pretty face was twisted and smeared by ugly tears. There was movement behind them, but Dudley was too caught up in the angry movement of the girl's arm, her clawed hand that stretched out and struck Draco hard across his pale face, Dudley winced a little for him.

"Ginny!"

Draco was a marble statue before her rage, mocking mirror eyed and unmoving, a red mark smeared across the sharp edges of his cheek bone.

"It's not true, Harry, tell me it isn't true"

Harry and his friends were in the kitchen and the crying girl was screaming at his cousin, her hands grabbing and pulling at his shirt. "Harry, please"

Harry faulted, he was tiny and skinny and his skin paper thin beneath her sharp angry nails as she threw herself around his neck. His dark hair curled around the slenderness of her fingers like silk ropes. "Ginny, I..."

Dudley grinned viciously behind him, catching the girl's heart-broken face, she screeched and threw herself away, twisting to face the blond boy, her wand appearing in her hand and pointed at Draco's pale blank face.

"Gin!"

"Ginny!" Harry had leapt into action, snagging her wrist and with a deft twist her fingers were forced to slackness and the wand fell with a hollow bounce to the floor. She fought against him, filled with so many emotions that Dudley didn't even know which one she was crying for.

"I hate you, why are you protecting him!" She hit Harry then, and his skin, glitter gold split beneath her nails, leaving a trail of sluggish blood tracing the slope of his mouth and chin. She sent a loathing glare at Draco through her tears and his face was smug and mocking and he mouthed something at her than made her scream like a wounded animal.

Harry struggled as she surged forward, he wasn't that much bigger than the girl and she was brutal and unpredictable in her attack. Ron was frowning and moved forward hesitatingly, pulling his sobbing sister to him, she clawed at him before running out the room. His red and green jumper was streaked with tears.

"Harry"

"I'm sorry!" his cousin cried suddenly, the blood still wet across his lips and his eyes wide and wild and the air around him was crackling strangely. "I didn't know..."

"Didn't know? How could you not know how much she loved you?"

Dudley didn't think that was what Harry was talking about, but the dark haired boy remained silent and hung his head looking as small and breakable next to his angry, massive redheaded friend as he ever had in their childhood. Ron fists were clenching and unrolling and he spluttered, shaking Hermione away from him angrily, he could have snapped Harry in two if he tried and Dudley didn't think his cousin would have tried to stop him in that moment. Draco was frowning, his faced marred with something that would have been worry except for the overwhelming, fierce, selfish longing that corrupted it. He took a step forward, scowling as he reached out to the dark haired youth.

"And you!" Ron spun around to the pale boy, shoving Harry aside with a controlled roughness that said more than any apology would do later on. "How dare you, who do you, think you are. Death Eater!"

"Ronald!"

"Ron!"

No one expect Draco to punch the redheaded boy, but he did, reaching up and out and landing a solid blow that made the taller youth stumble and bend over in pain, clutching his nose and hissing curses between gritted teeth.

The kitchen was a mess of screaming and shouting, Ron had his wand out and was pointing it at Draco, his hand shaking with barely controlled rage and vicious sparks were flaring out the tip of the thin wood, landing and searing small black dots into the stone floor. Hermione was pulling at him, wrapping her arms around his broad chest, her hands looked very small and feminine against his violently red jumper.

"Just try it, blood traitor" Draco spat, his voice blade sharp, penetrating the bubble of panic that had engulfed them.

Dudley didn't have a clue what a blood traitor was but Ron had another surge of vengeful energy and was struggling against the smaller bodies trying to hold him back. Harry was once again between two warring factions, but Ron wasn't the same as Dudley or Draco and shoved him away with little interest, too focused on the pale youth before him.

Harry stumbled backwards and Draco's hand clasped around his thin upper arms, dragging him to stability, those pale fingers tight with greedy possession as he pulled the dark haired youth further away from Ron. Those steel grey eyes were for one single moment slanted towards Dudley and Dudley hated him the same as ever. Harry was staring wounded at his best friend and Draco sent a vicious grin over his head, Ron only saw Malfoy and managed to pull his arm from Hermione, waving his wand with angry jerky movement.

"No you're going to hit Harry!"

Hermione's voice was shrill in panic and Dudley snapped to his feet, watching sick, as the red light arched towards the two boys. Draco and Harry were a picture of perfect contrasts in that moment, Draco gripping Harry still and Harry staring wide eyed and breakable and so very, very pretty.

The light never did hit them.

Harry frowned, eyes narrowed into illuminating green slits and his forehead beaded with perspiration; the red shape crashed and rebounded off what seemed like a translucent dome that shimmered before them. The violent, scarlet shape cracked, splitting into a thousand angry streaks that bolted away from them and back at Ron and left a small harsh cut across his suddenly pale face.

"Harry... You... I" Ron and Harry were looking at each with a terribly uncertainty and Dudley realised with a start that this was a poignant moment in their relationship. Harry had never retaliated against the redhead's temper before, and now Ron had been bettered so very easily in those few scrambling seconds. Harry was bird boned and paper skinned next to his friend and he had to crane his neck back to look up into Ron's face but Dudley didn't think for a second Ron would ever win a real fight between them.

Ron swallowed, all the fight drained out of him and he was a whirlwind of betrayal and embarrassment and guilt staring into Harry apologetic, weary face. His cousin may had said something to ease his friend battered pride but Draco got there first and Draco was nothing if not scathingly.

"Well, go on then. Run off like the she-weasel, go nurse your bloated ego and wallow in self pity for a while. It seems to be the only thing you Weasleys are good at."

Ron stared at Harry for one long second, Harry was pale and wavering in Draco's hands and his lips were still caked with blood from Ginny's nails. "Ron..." he began and made to move, Draco's grip was firm and Ron left the room red and silent.

Hermione was still staring with quiet thoughtfulness at Harry and Draco, her expression fierce and intelligence gleaming from her drawn features. Draco's pale fingers were still coiled vice like into Harry's overly large jumper, his knuckles bleached and her eyes darted from his hands and up to his pale, pointed face. Draco's eyes were molten mecury, feverish in their obsession and his mouth was a quivering line that was tight with lingering fear and something else Dudley couldn't name.

"Oh..." her eyes flew to Harry's big exhausted green ones and then back to Draco's, her arm made a sudden sharp movement and she captured Harry's small thin hand, their knuckles bumped awkwardly together and she squeezed his fingers before letting them drop just as quickly.

"Go" Harry said softly, his eyes brilliantly green with understanding and Dudley wondered how he could see that and not the desperation that was brutally obvious in ever line of Draco's tense body behind him. Hermione's love was a shinning purity in her pretty face and Harry's innocence was still jewelled in his eyes and maybe that explained everything. The quivering in Harry's limbs was painfully obvious now and the thin layer of dried blood cracked across his lips as he gave a crooked grin at his friend.

Hermione gave a heart wrenched smile in return and left quickly. Dudley only just caught the look of immeasurable hate she sent to Draco.

Draco sent her a smirk back that was all smashed up glass and razor blades and his hands still locked around Harry's too thin arms possessively.

Harry didn't notice and Dudley wished he had but didn't say anything, his tongue was plastered to the roof of his mouth and his jealousy was tar in between his teeth. Draco didn't spare him a look as he pushed Harry into one of those big wooden chairs next to the table and that made his throat lock up even tighter for some reason he wasn't smart enough to put a name to.

Harry was as pale as Draco, his hands shaking violently and his hair matted damp with sweat against his forehead as he slumped against the wood. Draco was a thin, pale blade hovering over his cousin and his fingers lingered on Harry's shoulders, the desperation bright in his face. Dudley wanted to rip his hands away from Harry and Draco still wasn't giving him any of his usually smug blade sharp smirks and that annoyed him to no end.

"They told you not to use wandless magic" Draco's voice was as sharp and mocking as ever, there was no softness or tender edge to his voice, but there was something there and Harry's even in his infinite oblivious denial snapped his head up to look into those liquid mercury eyes. Dudley was hissing beneath his breath and his fat hands twisting together, his pretty little cousin glanced at him and the raging beast in his chest calmed slightly, he wasn't forgotten just yet. Draco eyes were still melted metal as he watched him.

The dark haired boy, bowed forward slightly and hugged at his hands, "My magic just reacts and I can't control it" he said and unfurled his fingers slowly. Sparks like miniature bolts of lightning danced between his digits, leaving small trails of burns along the white skin. There were still calluses on his finger pads but they seemed insignificant in comparison

Draco let out an angry growl and snatched at Harry's hands, their fingers were tangled together, thin and pretty, even with the burns and the bleached bone skin and Dudley hands were clumsy and fat as he watched their strange grasp.

"Just stop it," Draco snarled, his anger was always hot around Harry, "Stop it now,"

His cousin looked terribly young for a moment and his eyes were big and wild and strangely empty as he stared into Draco's pale angry face. Draco was squeezing Harry hard enough to bruise and looked a lot bigger than the dark haired boy in that moment, folded half over his shuddering form. Harry hunched forward, his forehead nearly touching Draco's chest and he was still shaking in the boy's merciless hold, pained and exhausted.

"You make me so mad" Draco murmured but his rage was just a smoulder now. There were sparks leaping out between their closed hands and their skin was blotched red and raw until Dudley couldn't tell whose was whose. They didn't even glance at him and he was glad. He didn't want to be hurt. Dudley hurt people, he didn't get hurt, not even for Harry, especially not for Harry.

"You make me so mad. No more." Draco was repeating softly, all but mouthing words against Harry's damp curls. "No more of this shit now."

He didn't have a clue what Draco was talking about, but Harry's luminous eyes were blazing wide against the dark material of the other's boys shirt, he pushed himself back away and against the wood of the chair, staring up at Draco, his lips pressed together in one thin line. Their hands were red raw and starting to discolour but there was no sparks left anymore and Harry pulled him limbs away, his eyes were staring at his palms angrily and that big veil of denial was sliding right across his face once again.

He shoved his battered hands up into the extra depths of his jumper and slid around Draco, mumbling his thanks before fleeing the room.

"Harry" Draco called after him softly, his voice was broken and hoarse and didn't carry far enough. His small, dark haired cousin ran away and Dudley was viciously happily and hissed his laughter at Draco's empty white face cruelly.

Draco snarled and spun around and hit at him wildly, his anger cold and hot and undecided as he overturned the chair Harry had been sitting on. Dudley was laughing, really, really laughing then. He was laughed at Draco's rejection, at the pretty person's rejection and his relief that Harry was still alone, Harry alone meant he was still Dudley's at least on some level, but better he wasn't Draco's or Ginny. Dudley would rather not have his stupid, pretty cousin than let anyone else have even a piece of him.

Draco was spiting his anger and raised his fist to hit him then, ice and diamonds and as fragile as Harry in every contrasting way. Dudley smirked and narrowed his fat beady, ugly eyes spitefully as he continued to laugh.

"You're bloody sick mate"

Draco was still, staring at him, his eyes wide and hatefully as his own words were repeated back at him. For some reason Dudley was reminded of a single silvery trail that had followed the boy's cheek the night before.

But Draco wasn't as good at denial as Harry was.

* * *

Jees, its still not finished, I'm on twenty one pages now and theres still quite a bit to go. This last scene wasn't planned, actually I wanted to include a different scene there to finish this chapter off but then Harry went all sparky and Draco went all well... however you wish to view it.

**Some Character Notes**

**Dudley and Draco** have a very unhealthy and twisted relationship in this, its completly dependant on Harry and that means it changes its form when ever the situation with Harry changes, which while being quite irratic is bloody fun to write. Dudley was a creature made from his enviroment and now everything's changed he's clinging so adamantly on to Harry because he's the last remaining link to that old world. He's so resentful and envious and obsessed with him and his emotions are consuming and ugly. He seems to be growing worse the longer he is forced into Harry's company. Draco is a lot deeper than he at first seems and sometimes about as shallow as a shower, he's a contridicting character and a nasty little bugger a lot of the time.

I love **Harry**, I really do. You can do so much with his character so easily and I have a bit of a main character thing anyway, however he's a bloody pain in this story. Dudley has built up this half fantasy of his cousin and considering this entire fic is through Dudley's eyes and Harry is so coloured by this fantasy of Dudley, that the real Harry is mostly a mystery to me in this, which is ironic considering everything revolves around him. Which parts of Harry are real and which parts are Dudley's imagination or contorted view? It's a tricky one. I still love him though.

**Ron and Hermione, **are a pair for me. I love them and am not using them half as much as they could be used, they are the counter balance to the unhealthy infactuation of Dudley and Draco. **Ginny** could also be lumped with Dudley and Draco, but her crush hasn't evolved into these cyles of hate, resentment and obsession that Dudley has, you can strong crushes without obsession, thus is Ginny's role. I struggle with Ginny because I disliked her in the later books. I find her easier to like when I write her myself, she's a young teenage girl not a magical powerhouse and as with every relationship I seem to write, her love is only a step away from hate.

Its a thin line.

**REVIEWS:** What you think of Harry in this?

Reviews make authors write faster. Fact.


	3. Chapter 3

-- Chapter 3- -

The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind of melodrama.

Everyone was broken and fractured by their anger and Dudley amusement was cruel as he watched.

He hated these people, hated them for being pretty, for their pretty, perfect lives and their relationships with his pretty, perfect cousin. Now everyone had been brought down to his level of ugly emotions and he was choking with laughter at their pain. He understood this, understood jealousy and hatred and pain and he drew comfort from it.

No one's pain was as good as Harry's.

Harry wasn't ugly though. Harry would never, ever, be ugly. Instead his pain made him big eyed and porcelain skinned and weak and Dudley always had liked him best that way. It isolated him.

The boy was sat hunched; tiny and breakable and ready for Dudley, curled up into the small alcove at the top of the stairs in his thin jumper and his torn up jeans that flashed the tantalising white length of his thighs when he shifted. He had his head buried into the protective circle of his arms and his pain was ice- hot in the air as Dudley stood before him. One little word and Harry would be staring, shinning, pretty in his hatred up at him and just that easy, Dudley was in power again, Dudley owned Harry once more. There was no Ginny or Draco; there was just Dudley and his pretty, fragile, little cousin. The simplicity was thin but beautiful.

Harry stared up at him warily, big green eyes as always, shinning with innocence and Dudley laughed at the thought of Harry ever being with someone like Draco.

"What, Dudley?" the dark haired boy said, his voice raspy and soft and he looked so very weary, smudges faded to purple bruises beneath his eyes and his shoulders rolled forwards in a thin useless barrier between them. Dudley was dizzy on his own power, on his relief and greed and need; his fingers itched to touch the little figure before him, to claim him and hurt him and break him.

His obsession wasn't a tender one, it wasn't love or sex. It was power with a mile wide streak of lust, which was really just another way to possess and own another person. Lust was easier to understand in some ways and Dudley was, at the end of everything, a simple creature.

Harry was still watching him, tense and cautious and shifting uncomfortably beneath his feverish eyes. His thin, little hands rubbing together in his lap and Dudley could almost feel bones breaking and shattering beneath paper skin. He gave a twisted, ugly smirk and sank down next to Harry, pushing the smaller boy further up against the wall of the alcove to accommodate his girth.

Harry stared at him, his eyes a thousand tiny pieces of fractured jade and he was already so broken that for a moment Dudley was lost, confused by his own intentions. He was confused by Harry, by the shinny, pretty picture he'd painted of them both; that shimmered as thin and empty as mist when faced with the reality of his broken eyed cousin. Harry drew away from his large cousin and the shadows hid his wary face.

Someone shrieked below them and Harry twisted to stare in the direction of the sound, tense and quivering with suppressed movement. He was pale and beautiful and his eyes narrowed until Dudley could only see a slither of green, framed by twin lines of ink lashes that lay heavy and thick against the curve of his cheek. Dudley wanted to touch him so badly it hurt.

"I'd have done her" he said finally, crude and ugly as usual and his cousin's pretty features pulled in disgust and righteous anger.

"Don't talk about her like that"

Dudley smirked and Harry's mouth twisted in hatred, his loathing actually directed at Dudley this time and it was almost enough. His cousin tried to stand, but the sloped ceiling was too low above him and Dudley was a thick, unmoving wall before him. He gave Harry a push and the boy stumbled back downwards, sprawled out awkwardly next to him once more. He was staring at Dudley with renewed uncertainty, the cautious, hesitant look a backlash from their childhood. Feeling reared like a caged horse in Dudley's chest and he moved closer, nudging Harry sharply with his fist in a series of urgent rapid punches.

"Do you remember when we were little?"

Harry didn't reply, his face was carefully guarded, his lips pressed together until they were bloodless and Dudley could still pretend for a while that there was still fear present in his cousin's expression. Memories of their shared childhood helped him preserve his veil-thin fantasy.

"I hated you, everyone loved you, even when we were kids and I hated you for that. It didn't matter what we did; what my parents did," he explained with a dismissive wave of his hand, as if the abuse Harry had endured could ever be so easily forgotten, "They still loved you"

Harry sighed and Dudley hushed him with a vicious pinch, his fingers squeezing pale flesh till it glowed aggravated-red beneath his cruel fingers. "Shut up." He hissed, delighting in the flinch his cousin awarded him, "You were so little and useless and pretty and I was so angry at you, hated you, jealous of you" he frowned thoughtfully, slightly unsettled by his own words "well no, not really jealous. Not with you being beat up all the time by my dad and everything"

"Dudley..."

Dudley turned to look at him, frowning. His cousin's face was slightly turned away, his eyes glowing and downcast; he was still as fragile as ever but there was a layer of emotion that coated his words, emotion that wasn't anger or hate or even fear but something that was less pleasing and made Dudley scowl at the thin, small framed boy.

He reached out and grabbed at Harry, his fingers curling around that pale little chin and twisted the other boy until he was staring right at him. His cousin's familiar face was as beautiful as always, tired and a little uncertain, and the edges of power that shouldn't have existed, were the hard lines in his eyes and the straight slope of his cheeks. He was still Harry, still his angel faced little cousin. But the boy before him different, unfamiliar; there was now strength in his fragility. Unstated intelligence brightened by self confidence lit up his expression and he was staring at Dudley as if he understood, as if he could see and recognise the odd painful bits of emotions that Dudley himself didn't.

"I don't get you" he hissed down at his cousin's big neon green eyes. "How do you do it?"

Dudley's grip tightened and his cousin winced a little but there wasn't any real anger or hate in his expression and he allowed Dudley's almost frantic examination with a strange passive tolerance; Dudley hated him for that and the finger shaped bruises he would leave on his cousin's face were a testament to his disgust and his desire.

His cousin's lips were familiar red and pouting between his fingertips, and he hated and loved and wanted so badly and Dudley was so alone; he been so very isolated since he'd come here. His parents were faded shadows and ghosts that fluttered about upstairs, obsessed with their self pity. The witches and wizards were slender and beautiful in their distaste of him; the fat, ugly, stupid muggle. All he had was Harry and his little cousin, pliant and pouting in his hands with his unfamiliar eyes and his red mouth, didn't seem enough suddenly. He squeezed harder and Harry lips were forced slightly open until he saw the shiny whiteness of his teeth, ivory even in the dim light. Dudley wondered how anyone who'd never been allowed to go to the dentist could have such perfect teeth.

Harry suddenly twisted away and Dudley who hadn't finished, grabbed angrily at his shoulders and his other arm came twisting around the boy's thin back and landed heavily on the golden column of Harry's neck. The skin was smooth and delicate against his and he wanted to stroke it and rip into it all in the same breath. His fingers pressed white circles into Harry's neck and his grip on his jaw was still vice like as he forced the boy's compliance.

"Dudley"

Harry's voice was slightly shrill and his hand was pressing, fire-hot with the beginnings of his magic against his shoulder as Dudley moved his face forcefully. Harry's bottom lip was glossy and damp as he was dragged forward into the light.

Later, he would sometimes wonder what could have happened in that strange moment at the top of the stairs, most of the time he tried to pretend he hadn't wanted something to happen and the rest of the time he told himself he would have broken his cousin's skull.

There was a small spot on Harry's chin; irritatingly imperfect.

His hand slipped from Harry's face and he was being dragged backwards suddenly, his cousin was frozen; wide eyed and shocked before him, still pressed against the wall. Angry cold hands were on his shoulders and sending him to the floor awkwardly and Draco's pale, white iced face was staring down at him, molten in his rage.

He mouthed something and Dudley didn't even try to move, his cheeks were starting to burn with shame and Harry was barely in the edges of his peripherals, his hand still raised and his fingernails looked as if they were burning red, sparking with magic; defensive as if Dudley had been going to hurt him.

"Being bullied by a girl and now a muggle, how are you ever going to defeat the dark lord?" Draco was sneering down at Harry and his cousin sent a glare right back at him that was still bright in shock and soft in thanks. Draco stuck out a pale hand abruptly.

"Well, come on then, let's go drink ourselves to oblivion. Maybe if you get sick enough everyone will stop shouting at each other and start to realise what's actually important"

Harry didn't hesitate as he took Draco's offered palm.

They were gold and silver and bright contrasts in that dingy hallway and Dudley was still lying down, slumped like a slug on a dusty carpet, trying to stop the burning of his cheeks. "Wait" he whispered.

The two youths had yet to move and his voice was a loud noise in their silent, little world. Draco glared at him, his hand still holding Harry's and his cousin was still clutching at Draco, twinning their fingers together almost tenderly as he glanced down at Dudley's flaming face. Even Dudley couldn't pretend not to see the pity in those green eyes anymore.

The dark headed boy was painfully pretty, glitter gold trailed across pale skin and hair that was a testament to his lack of vanity and his eyes so brilliantly green behind those ridiculous bug glasses. It was almost like he hadn't aged a day since their first morning at kindergarten. He was still too thin, still hunched slightly defensively with bruises stretching highways of colour across his jaw like before, but he wasn't four anymore. Harry tilted his head to the side slowly, his eyes were fractured glass and for a single second he was diamonds and mist as he watched Dudley, so distant in his superiority. He wasn't a child and he wasn't just Dudley's little abused cousin anymore and Dudley was powerless because of it.

Dudley hated him so much in that moment, maybe more than he had ever hated Draco and it was difficult to know why exactly. He stumbled to his feet, glad to be head and shoulders above both of them and glared down, his pride a looming shadow behind him. Harry was going to say something, his bruised face and red lips were moving and Dudley didn't want to hear either of the possibilities, so he fled.

He spun around the corner and pressed his heaving ugly bulk against the thin wall, still hearing their murmured conversation; Draco's hissing disgust and Harry's soft spoken denial echoing in barely heard whispers as they shuffled away together, their comfort with each other so much louder than anything they could have said. Dudley felt sick, his eyes were hot and raw as he ambled away, angry and hating and still forever, obsessed.

He didn't know what to do, his emotions were ripping apart his insides and he wanted to cry and break things. In some ways Dudley was still very young and the young always seek comfort in their parents.

His parents were housed at the very top of the house, in a couple of small rooms that had creaked with age and neglect last time he'd been there. He hadn't wanted to see them before, preferring to stay as a half cast between the muggles and the wizards, trying to stop life for a few months before it all went back to normal. So he could pretend that screaming portraits and red lighting that danced across peoples' hands were all just strange vodka induced dreams. By seeing his family he was accepting things were different, but the parallels of their old and new lives were being shoved in his face and with Harry and his strangely cold, distant eyes walking further away from him every day, he needed something he knew.

The staircase up to their room creaked and groaned under his weight and the door loomed too narrow and askew ahead of him. He could hear the faint murmurs of his parents from behind the thin walls and was surprised at how comforting the familiar sounds were; it only made his eyes burn harder and he pushed almost angrily into an odd place of light and shinning polished surfaces and he blinked against the brightly lit room in surprise. Their living room stretched out before him, complete with pictures filled with their beaming round faces and the smell of tea and old biscuits. It was as if someone had taken a picture of number 4 privet drive and projected it around the old creaking attic room.

"Mum?"

His mother was a washed out grey statue, sat stiff like a mannequin on the couch, her eyes sunken into desperate little black beads that shone with suppressed tears. Dudley didn't remember her ever looking so empty and dead and he stumbled forward towards her with new found desperation.

He slumped and slid against the forever too thin form of his mother, till his head was in her lap and his tears were trailing along the small lump of his nose and dripping down in ugly little blotches that stained her skirt.

"Oh sweetheart" her voice was almost nonexistent, faded and breaking and he thought that she was probably crying too. Her hands were frail and old against his skin and he leant into her as she stroked his hair with shaking fingers, the silence was so heavy around them it felt like he couldn't breathe. His old house was a painted mockery before them, stretching out into extended rooms of cooked food and humming washing machines. The curtains were all closed though and he guessed they had to be, this wasn't real and the real world was a long way from the bitter tasting fantasy he had stepped into.

"Harry made it" Petunia whispered, her fingers drawing gentle lines across his scalp, lifting his fine hair soothingly as she went; a throwback to his early childhood before he had stopped being hurt by other people's words. "Vernon was going mental and so Harry made us this,"

Dudley didn't know whether she was pleased or not and he didn't think she knew either, his mother couldn't ever be pleased at something his cousin had done, it just went against some old, scarred up part of her being, but he had no doubt that Harry had done it to be nice. He hadn't realised his cousin had been up to see his parents, but then he supposed it seemed like something Harry would do.

He hated so much how everything always came back to his stupid, angel faced cousin.

His head was suddenly damp and he glanced up to see his mother's sunken eyes gleaming with overflowing tears that stroked the edges of her cheeks and dripped down onto him. Dudley had seen his mother cry a handful of times, but these tears were different, it was if they were full of years of pain and anger and resignation, and her next words were probably more potent that he fully understood.

"He thinks this is enough,"

Dudley sat up and patted awkwardly at his mother's shoulder, "He's not like us" he tried to help her but the pain only flickered harder across her face and her eyes were so very far away that for a second he didn't think he'd ever be able to find her again.

"They are different; they forget us in the end. Leave for something better, more beautiful and we have to stay locked up in a room of smoke and mirrors, wishing we were able to follow them" her face was hardened by old pain and her thin lips were curling with revulsion until they disappeared into the lines of her teeth. It was her sister, a freak just like his cousin, a beautiful, smiling, skinny little thing that shone in pictures and had disappeared into an untouchable world that left people like his mother hard eyed and staring into space wanting so bad that she sometimes forgot that anything else could be worthwhile.

Dudley thought he had lost his mum again, but she shook herself back from whatever reality she had disappeared into and tilted to look at him. Petunia pushed at the yellow curls that lay flat and damp across his forehead, her eyes softening to gentle tenderness and she cupped his chin with probably more love than he would ever receive anywhere else. He had forgotten how much his mother had loved him for a little while and shame burnt hot in-between the spaces of his obsession.

"It's better to hate than to want" she whispered and Dudley wondered if she was talking about Harry or her sister. He supposed it didn't really matter either way, but looking at her sunken eyes and grey ghost like form he couldn't help but think she was wrong. He just didn't know the right answer.

The smell of crumbling bourbons and custard creams assaulted him once again and he glanced up into his mother's old face and couldn't bear to stay in her presence of hate and envy and fantasies anymore. He stumbled away with a bunch of murmured excuses, falling through doors and sighing as the dusty, gloomy stairway came into view.

His mother was different than Dudley, she had wanted what her sister had had; needed to be a part of the attractive, exciting world in which the wizarding folk lived. Petunia had wanted their acceptance, but he didn't. Dudley wanted to own and posses, to be better and stronger. He didn't want equality, he wanted power and Harry was rapidly spiralling away from any power he had ever held over him.

Petunia had wanted to follow her sister and Dudley wanted Harry to stop leaving. It was the difference between them and he wasn't sure which would end up the most destructive. He knew that neither would end well though, at least for a little while.

--

Dudley sloped off back to his room, wishing he hadn't gone to see his mother and the prison of mist and shadows she had locked herself in, because that's all it was. Maybe that's what all fantasies were, or maybe it was all obsessions were.

He was slightly scared by his thoughts and the sight of Harry and Draco sprawled out across the floor of his bedroom did nothing to improve his mood. He froze, watching as Harry's hand slipped across the floor, the stain from the whiskey he and Draco had shared faded and absent of all meaning beneath his cousin's slender fingers and he longed so much his breath got all caught up in chest and he found himself unable to move as he watched them. He watched them and wanted to gauge out his eyes, hating them a little more with every second and wishing Draco would juat disappear.

If they saw him they pretended not to and he kind of hoped that was the case, because otherwise it meant that were too focused on each other to notice Dudley at all.

"Harry..." Draco's words were slightly slurred and his gaze oddly blue and open as if the mask he had been wearing had fallen away with the whiskey. He hadn't looked like that when he'd been drinking with Dudley, but there again Dudley wasn't Harry. His cousin hummed his acknowledgement and gazed with lazy, relaxed half mast eyes at the thin blade form that had slumped up next to him.

"You talk a lot of crap" Draco finished, smirking with a grin that was almost soft but not really and he had to wonder what had caused it the alcohol or Harry's shinning sincere expression. His cousin snorted in amusement stretched out a little, his arms reached limply above his head and Dudley couldn't help but trace the long, lean lines of his body hungrily. Draco misted gaze mirrored his own and jealousy burnt up once more like bile in his throat as he watched the two youths.

"So do you, but I've known that since the first time I met you" Harry's words were laced with heavy satire but the quirk of his lips expressed an amusement that Dudley rarely saw him express. Draco's brow wrinkled in irritation momentarily and he shoved Harry hard enough to send the boy fumbling and wobbling against the bed they were both leant against.

"Here" Draco said, offering the nearly empty bottle and silence stretched between them as Harry tentatively slurped at the alcohol, his face bright with disgust as he choked on the strong smelling liquid. His cousin paused drunkenly and was suddenly still and staring at Draco's pale sharp features.

The pale youth's eyes were closed, his eyelashes almost white against his cheeks and his cousin's pretty little face were soft and bright and his face a little flushed as he examined the other boy. Dread dropped like a lead bullet into Dudley's gut and he wondered if Harry even knew what he was doing.

"I know I'm stunning but really; control your staring, Potter" Draco chimed lazily and there was a smugness in his words that Dudley knew all too well and for a moment he was glad Draco hadn't seen him, unable to face his mockery straight on.

Harry fumbled awkwardly suddenly, the bottle of alcohol hold in white hands and confusion livid on his face. "I'm not... I mean..." he stared down into the sloshing amber liquid and he could almost see him drawing away, pulling away from Draco hungry, demanding emotions.

"I'm in with love Ginny" Harry whispered, part apologetic, part confusion and so heavy in denial it was all Dudley could do not to laugh. He had never seen anyone go from relaxed to hurtfully angry as quick as Draco managed it in those few moments. His back was ram rod straight and his was all blade like collarbones and starved cheekbones, angry and sharp and untouchable in his pain. Pain looked good on Draco as well.

"You talk a load of shit" Draco repeated and his words were no longer soft and full of carefully controlled emotion; they were razorblades and crushed glass and he looked like he was going to hit Harry at any moment. Harry's gaze was cold and wavering in equal measure and he was clutching the bottle defensively before him like a cross.

"Draco..." Harry was a lot for words; his expression so lost it was as if he was a child being left alone outside watching Dudley and his mother all over again, unable to understand what was going on. His cousin was worse with feelings and emotions despite his empathy, his upbringing had numbed him in some ways, and Harry had made himself numb in others.

"What Potter?" Draco hissed, still as stiff as a plank and his hands twisting angrily in his lap. "You want me tell you it's going to all be okay and then everything will work out?" the boy scoffed and he seemed to deflate, sinking limply against the bed and floor, his expression cruel and mocking and pained.

"You're not in love with her, you'd like to think you are because that would easy but you're not. You love her, but you love everyone don't you. You're so desperate for acceptance and kindness that you can't help yourself can you? That's why you're stupid, abusive relatives are here and you allowed yourself to be used as a figurehead in a war that you're too naive to understand. You're not in love with her, you're just selfish."

Draco face was twisted and pained and deadly; his feelings for Harry were different than Dudley's; harsh, more inconsistent, more real and acceptable and yet Dudley couldn't help but think that in some ways the pale faced boy could end up getting hurt so much more than he could. Draco's next words were quiet, swallowed up by emotion he was unable to understand. "Fuck off Harry, I hate you sometimes"

Harry almost reached to him, but he was isolated in his uncertainty and confusion and denial and he shuddered and ran away, stumbling past Dudley with an expression that he couldn't quite understand.

Dudley didn't go after him, he might have been alone again, but he knew who Harry's thoughts would be consumed by this time, even if his cousin didn't.

His knowledge didn't make him feel any better this time.

* * *

_I've finished my A levels and despite being absent for most of the second year; I got all As and am off to university in september. London here I come. Wish me luck._

_._

**Chapter notes**

**Petunia: **J.K Rowling never garnered as much of my respect as when she revisited the Dursleys in the final book. The idea of Petunia begging to be let into Hogwarts is heart wrenching. I loved the scene I wrote with her and Dudley. Sometimes, because the real story is about Draco and Harry I forgot about Dudley's other feelings and I really enjoyed writing the little mother/son moment in this. I also like parallels, in case you can't guess, and Petunia/Lily and Dudley/Harry parallels satisfied my own compulsive need for pattern and repetition.

**Obsession and Love: **There's a difference, which a lot of fanfictions seem unable to distinguish and it annoys me greatly because it reduces a good fanfic to a juvenile one almost instantly. You can love someone obsessively but you can't obsess about someone enough to love: that's just stalking. Love is a lot more complicated and dependant on another, obsession is, in this context, a solitary pursuit and will not lead to love. Dudley confuses the two especially when watching others love his cousin.

**Bourbans and Custard creams** are a brand of biscuits by the way. i've never seen any in America so I figured it wouldn't hurt to mention it and when I say biscuits I mean like cookies not like those biscuits you eat as a side dish. (Which incedently are scones without the raisins: i get a lot of weird of looks when I start putting jam and cream on them.) Speaking of America, the drinking age is high... =( I've never wanted a drink more than when I was told I couldn't have one.

_**Reviews**- please. Makes me write faster. honest._


	4. Chapter 4

**Ugly**

**Chapter Four**

Draco and Harry's relationship was colder than ever.

After Harry's denial their relationship had spirally from awkward uncertainty to humiliated rage.

His small, glass eyed cousin refused to even look at Draco anymore, his cheeks were continually dusted with heat and pink embarrassment and Draco was a silent wall of anger as he watched him; cold with distance and longing. The space between them hummed with things unsaid and unresolved and Dudley should have been all smirks and mocking laughter, but he couldn't muster up the energy. He was so terribly full of emotion and worn out because of them and he hated them for their melodrama and the way he couldn't stop watching as they scowled venom and rage at one and other.

Their argument didn't make Dudley feel any better; their embarrassed blanking and disdainful scowls felt false and fragile; ready to be broken and remade into something he didn't fully understand. They were full of anger and uncertainty fuelled partly by youth and partly by the tense, claustrophobic atmosphere of the safe house. Somehow he didn't think either would hold sway for very long.

No one else seemed to share his opinion however and Harry's pretty friends were happy to go back to sneering and ignoring Draco with smug superiority, hiding his skinny little cousin away from the pale youth as if they actually thought it helped.

Even Hermione, with her dark intelligent eyes was happy to slip back into hating Draco and pretending as if the past weeks had never happened. It surprised Dudley that even the most clever, rational people were so easily pulled into blind fantasies when they wished for it. He guessed that everyone spent time lying to themselves, no matter how insightful or intelligent they appeared. No matter how pretty.

Without Harry to talk to, Draco was even more isolated than Dudley and if he thought that would have instigated a comradeship between them he would have been wrong. Draco was too lost in his own anger and hatred and wearisome fear to care about him. Dudley only half understood what had changed, the sneering, mockingly playful humour seemed drained out of Draco and the boy was sharper and crueller than ever.

The pale youth prowled around the house like a caged animal, snarling at anyone who got in his path. He got into a thousand scuffles with the redheaded family and his face was an odd series of fading bruises and blossoming flower petal injuries. If his cousin cared about Draco's self destructive anger he never said anything. Harry was never there, _to_ say anything.

The grizzled old warriors had started to overwhelm the house. They were desperate, frantic casualties, fumbling around the kitchen with sunken eyes and haunted expressions, bleeding onto floors and staring off into space while their hands shook around cold tea. It was scary to watch them and Dudley wasn't the only one who averted his eyes when they came home.

They were also obsessed with his cousin.

Dudley had found it odd; before how they held up Harry as some shinning messiah, now they worked him like a dog. The harsh, starved contours of their face were all tense and hopeless as they lectured Harry, ambushing him in the dim corners of the house and Harry just stood there, pressed against peeling wallpaper, tiny in his fragile humanity and folding weak as cardboard, beneath their pressure and his own guilt.

Dudley didn't know what to think as he watched them and a lot of the time he wasn't allowed to watch.

The men quickly became teachers, dragging Harry away to empty, dust covered rooms and the doors were a wall between them as he listened warily to the proceedings inside. Light slashed between the gaps of the doorway, illuminating the corridor in splashes of violent scarlet and emerald, smearing the opposite wall with magic until it faded like old blood, seeping into the house. Voice and cries of pain echoed faintly and once Dudley had listened in, hearing Harry's hoarse words, thin with pain and choking on his emotion as he begged for respite.

"Get up Potter, you think Voldermort will give you a breather?" the greasy haired man's voice was mocking and full of smug superiority and Dudley felt something that was a little like protectiveness and more like jealousy at the man's control over his cousin.

"I can't..." harry echoed weakly and there was another flash of light that ended with Harry's sharp cry of pain.

"We're doomed if this is the best you can do, now get up!"

Dudley's neck prickled as he listened and when he caught his hands shaking nervously, his cowardice kicked in and he ran away, upstairs to hide in the covers of his bed, shaking at the reality of a war that was being forced upon them all.

Draco glanced at him from the bed opposite and his pale eyes were iced but bright with understanding, as if he knew what Dudley had seen and he snorted, his mouth folding up into a single line of weary anger and he turned away, curling up until he was a small lump pressed against the further wall. Dudley glanced at him, hating and jealous and realised Harry probably needed Draco if only to stand up for him when he refused to do it himself.

And that was the problem with Harry. He didn't know when enough was enough; Dudley had seen him limping to the bathroom, his collar bone pale yellow with a smattering of bruises like stars across the sky and his face gaunt with exhaustion and wondered how long he could continue before he broke.

Dudley apparently wasn't the only one who thought so; but Harry had stopped listening to Hermione's bossy lectures a while ago and Ron was too full of British manliness to be able to express his concern to his friend. The only people who might have been stubborn and aggressive enough to shake some sense into him weren't speaking to him and so Harry threw himself into his lessons with destructive stupidity and into the library when it was over.

Harry was falling from between their fingers beautifully.

Dudley had taken to watching him read and he wasn't the only one. Ginny spent hours watching him from the doorway of the library. Her hair flames and ribbons around her pale face, lit up by the hallway lamps and the flickering witchlights that Harry had left bobbing around the dim room.

She was so very pretty in her mixture of emotion. Her eyes bright with love for his skinny runt of a cousin and hard with an anger that was harsh and overwhelming because of her youth and Harry's rejection. Dudley watched her from inside the room, curled up as best as his lumbering body would allow on one of the moth eaten couches and was smug at her physical distance from Harry's oblivious form.

He doubted his cousin even knew she was there and Ginny's pain was still too fresh and raw for her to make herself known or give her concerns a voice.

Harry was unbelievable cruel in a way Dudley had never noticed before. It wasn't intentional, for he didn't think Harry had a mean bone in his body, but somehow that made it worse. His obliviousness and apathy for other's emotions was terribly callous. He didn't seem to understand the impact his actions or lack of action had on people and the pain he caused them was all the bitterer for it.

He supposed it was his family's fault: Harry had never been brought up to understand others, no one had ever considered his emotions and so he had never learnt to consider other peoples. Dudley wondered if he ever would, in some ways Harry had been broken forever by the abuse of his childhood and it left a bad taste in his mouth when he realised it was his parents who had broken him.

Harry was all pretty lines and big eyes, and his flaws and sharp edges were like gleaming weapons being wielding by a beautiful child. He was socially inept because of them and no matter how kind or selfless he was naturally inclined; it didn't mean that he would ever be able to understand other people. It was wrong, jarring against the image of the perfect being Dudley had built up and he wished so desperately that Harry could see him, even if he didn't see anyone else.

He guessed Draco felt the same way, except Draco wanted more and would never be content with the limbo half realised area of fantasy Dudley lived in, and Harry didn't have a clue about any of it.

In some ways Harry was terribly naive.

Dudley thought what the grizzled men were doing was made almost perverse by his cousin's naivety. They were teaching him how to kill, how to hurt and murder and he doubted if the socially inept glass eyed boy knew the implications of his actions. Dudley didn't think he did either, but he wasn't the one who was being taught to kill.

Inside that dust filled library, away from the vindictive cruelty of his teachers Harry truly used magic. Without their input he was full of whispered words, that let a sickly green light slinking around the dim library till the air smelt of burnt hair and oil. His cousin's face was terribly fierce when he practised his magic, pinched and pained and cold as ice; he was a fearsome figure in some respects. Tiny and frail with bird bones; aiming his wand without a flinch as it poured out smoking magic and fire.

Dudley kind of hated magic. It was terribly unnatural and he felt a kinship to his jealous, wasted mother as he saw the power these witches held so uncaringly. It scared him.

Sometimes he thought it scared Draco too.

The metallic eyed boy didn't watch Harry like the others, he was too angry for that but sometimes he would pass the library as Harry let loose fire and lighting, and his face was a cracked mask of unresolved emotion and trepidation. He looked like he was watching someone die and in way Dudley supposed he was.

They all were.

The adults would stumble into the house a little thinner and ashen each day and Dudley felt like he watching people with cancer, dying in front of his eyes. He supposed in a way Harry was tainting himself to save them; trying to take their place. But he didn't think it worked like that no matter how much his skinny little cousin wished it was so. Harry was ready to throw himself to wolves and everyone else seemed all to happy with their sacrificial lamb but Dudley looked at his cousin and saw a child and wondered if everyone else was mad.

It took him a while to realise that they were just desperate. Protected inside the creaking walls of the safe house it was easy to forget about the reality of war outside and when the soldiers came limping in though the back door it was a cold slap of shameful fear, especially to Harry who seemed to think it their future rested on his shoulders. No tried to correct him.

The wolf man was the worse of the men who came back.

Harry would run his hands over the wolf man each time he came back, his tiny, child-like hands tracing the man's thinning body, feeling each newly protruding bone and ghosting over the blackened scabs with a relieved fear that made him tremble a little and wrap himself so tightly into the man's embrace Dudley didn't think anyone could have made him move.

The wolf man, Lupin was fading a little more each visit from the polite, shy middle aged man Dudley had first met. He was all edges and scars now, his hair wild and continuously matted and his expression bordering on feral. His dark eyes darted around the room and he flinched when Harry hugged him.

Dudley watched their exchanges feeling sick; he thought Lupin was going to die soon. Harry seemed to think so too. Harry's eyes were glazed and full of tears when the man turned away to leave and what was worse was Remus' were too.

Dudley didn't know where the man went, but he had heard the older redheads whispering about packs and someone called Greyback. It wasn't only Harry who was worried about Greyback but it was only Harry who said anything, his cousin would never say anything about his own brutal training or the breaking pressure he was under but he couldn't hold his tongue when it came to other people. His innocence made it all the more painful to watch.

He caught his cousin angrily talking to the greasy haired man, his fierce eyes dulled with knowledge and his hands fisted and shaking at his sides.

"You've got to take him out" he hissed, "They are starting to suspect him"

The man snorted; his face pinched and angry and Dudley wondered if he even cared.

"Please" Harry continued and there was something like disgust in his eyes at the man's dismissing gesture. "Please Snape, you must; they're hurting him" His words choked a little in his throat and he turned away from Snape's gleaming, intelligent eyes, the curling curtains of his dark hair sliding to cover his pale face. Dudley wondered if he was crying, Harry was pretty when he cried.

"Mr Potter, are you really so naive?" the man asked and his voice was apathetic over the little gasps of Harry's misery.

Harry shook his head and flinched away from the man's uncaring tone, folding into himself a little, looking tiny and fragile and glass like next to the imposing figure of his professor. Dudley thought he was beautiful.

"How can you be so cold?" he asked and he was full of hatred that was old and bitter as he glared up at his professor. Yet, it was also oddly childish and Dudley was reminded once again of Harry's innocence and wondered if it might not be immaturity instead.

"There is a war going on" Snape retorted and crossed his arms, his bony hands tapping at his sleeves impatiently, "people get hurt; thus is the nature of war. Do you really suppose yourself to be so special that everyone you care about can be immune to reality?"

His cousin let out a sound like kicked dog and for a moment Dudley thought he would leap at the professor. "I hate you" he said and there was such blind, childish conviction in his statement that it was probably just as bad as if he had physically hurt him. Dudley didn't understand exactly what was passing between the two in those moments but it felt wrong for his cousin to hold such blind abhorrence.

Snape obviously felt so too and his sharp whip like lash of laughter was full of a mixture of emotions that Dudley didn't really understand. "Grow up, Harry"

Harry paused and all but ran from the room, his face as cold and fragile as ice and his eyes full of anger and pain. Dudley would have followed but for a moment he was mesmerised by the older man's expression. His fingers were still tapping at his arm but now the movement seemed nervous rather than impatient and his cold eyes were melting into memories and guilt.

He wondered what the man's story was to cause such guilt. His face looked old and worn in the faded light of the kitchen, his eyes pressed deep into his skull and circled by rings of bruises and tiredness. He looked as close to death as the wolf man.

Morbidly Dudley wondered which one of them would die first.

Snape was a confusing person. His hatred for Harry was obvious and his feelings were returned with equal vigour but there was a complexity to his emotion that his skinny cousin lacked. Sometimes he would stare at Harry, his harsh face slack and eyes longing. At first Dudley had misunderstood him, disgusted and jealous until he'd remembered the empty, hollow desperation of his mother's face.

Petunia had looked at Harry the same way as Snape did, seeing not his fragile, bird boned cousin but Lily. Harry's mother must have shone so strongly from Harry's big, gem like eyes and his mother and Snape were both captured in them, lost to memoires and old hatred. Dudley sometimes wondered if anyone saw Harry for what he truly was. Some saw his parents and others just saw a saviour.

If had any thoughts about his own vision of his pretty, perfect cousin he didn't think too keenly on it, he wasn't ready for that.

Draco might have but he didn't want to think of that either.

Snape and Draco had a familiar fondness between them; that reminded him of Lupin and Harry. Expect it was stronger and harsher, Lupin treated Harry delicately and Harry only saw the best bits of his wolf uncle. Draco and Snape probably hated each a bit and he wondered if they would have been friends if not for the situation they had found themselves in.

He wondered if they could friends with the prospect of Harry in between them.

"You need to give him a break" Draco said suddenly, his voice low and sharp in the quietness of the kitchen and he was leaning against the doorframe, lit up white and dangerous in the morning light. Dudley pressed himself further into the shadows of the room and hoped they wouldn't notice him.

"Oh do I?" Snape sneered, any disquieting weariness hidden beneath a mask of mockery and cold hatred. He stiffened as Draco stepped into the room almost burning with feeling as he stared up at the older man.

"He's going to go mad if you keep up that training"

"We can only hope" Snape drawled and his words were so overwhelmed with his disdain for Dudley's skinny cousin that he almost didn't see Draco's shock white face fold up into lines of worry and pained rage.

"You're going to kill him, he doesn't say anything but he shouldn't have to. You're meant to notice how injured his is, how he doesn't eat or talk to anyone."

Snape paused for a second, his eyes flashing in knowledge that Dudley was pretty sure he already knew and his lips pursed as he waited for the rage to subside in Draco's exhausted from. He leant forward suddenly and pressed his hands into the youth's thin shoulders, curling his fingers tightly around thin collarbones and pressing as if to gain attention.

"Despite Mr Potter's many faults weakness is not one of them. If he is struggling it is not through anything I am doing." Snape's dark eyes were boring into Draco's closed off expression and he held tight as the pale youth flinched away from him.

"But..."

Snape sneered at thought of his cousin and rolled his eyes, "The idiot boy needs to grow up, though I doubt that is possible" he paused and looked down at Draco's face as if searching for an answer to a question he considered disgusting. "Really Draco?"

Draco's white face was suddenly flooded with colour and Dudley was surprised; he had never seen the youth anything but controlled with his emotions and it was odd to see him so young and painfully human. It made him harder to hate.

"Severus, have you heard from my mother?"

Snape frowned and his face twisted in sympathy that sat heavy on his features. "No Draco, there is still no word. I am sure she is safe"

Draco snorted and pulled away from the man, "We both know that's a lie" he scoffed and edged away from Snape as if pained him to be in the man's company. "Will you..."

Snape nodded slowly, "I will tell you as soon as I hear any news. I am sure she is proud of you where ever she is"

Draco's face was pale and iced perfection once again, any hint of the teenager beneath lost in the sharp unwelcoming bones of his face and the narrowed blue slit of his eyes. "Now that is definitely a lie."

Snape was quiet as the Draco slipped out the room and it was only once the sound of the boy's footsteps had faded into the distance did he turn to Dudley, pressed up into the shadows of the kitchen. His black eyes were full of lightning and magic and Dudley felt himself quiver in unexpected fear. He was mostly ignored and being under the full force of one of the freak's gazes felt wrong and dangerous.

"If I catch you spying on anyone again, I'll curse you until you eat unless it's through a tube" Snape hissed and paused, wrinkling his face in disgust and Dudley felt himself wilt at the sharp hatred directed towards him. "Though that may be considered a kindness in your case"

The man winced suddenly and his hand curled around the top of his arm, pressing into the material so hard Dudley could see the thinness of his limbs and the taunt muscles that quivered beneath his robe. Snape's face was a mask of old pain and apprehension and he glanced warningly at him before he disappeared. The room was filled with the squeaky pop of magic and Dudley grimaced nervously at the sound. His heart was frozen in fear and he wondered if that was what it was like for Harry as he had faced the greasy haired professor. If it was, he cousin was braver than he was, but he already knew that.

By the time he managed to get his limbs to move, the anxious chatter of the rest of the household was echoing around the corridor and Dudley pressed himself against the doorframe, hating the way his body folded around the wood and remembered the slender silhouette Draco had made in the same position, hating him a little more.

"Harry? Harry?" Hermione's shrill voice broke through the haze of his resentment and Dudley stared as his skinny cousin stumbled toward the redhead family, his face streaked with blood that was sliding sluggish from the raw wound on his forehead, tracing the shocked edges of his face.

The bushy haired girl only just managed to grab at the dark haired youth before he slipped to the floor, his skin waxen and without the glitter smears of beauty Dudley was so used to seeing. Harry's hands were painted red and shaking as he grabbed at Hermione and she was as wide eyed as he was, gesturing angrily at the redheaded family as Harry started to mumble, his words an incoherent tumble.

"Voldemort, he, he... Where's Draco?"

Ron moved forward and hesitantly lifted his friend, his large limbs able to fold his slender friend up into the crook of his arm and he carried Harry into the kitchen, pushing Dudley into the hall and out of their way as he made his way into the kitchen, wincing as the light exposed Harry's torn up face and his wild expression.

"Ron... Ron... Where's Draco" Harry muttered again and there a thin desperation in his voice that made Hermione glance nervously up at her redheaded friend.

"Harry, are you okay?"

"Was it Voldemort?"

"What did you see?"

Harry hissed his irritated and tried to push away from the crowd of red that had gathered around him, stumbling with weakness, "Where's Draco!" he snapped and Ron's face was bright with jealously that didn't really have place in the presence of his bloody best friend, but was entirely human and full of humanity's logical.

"Harry, what did you see?" Ginny asked quietly and her voice was calm in the midst of her family's frantic demands.

Harry grabbed at her in desperation, his eyes so brilliantly bright with need that Dudley felt a little blinded and was reminiscent of his cousin's hunger desperation for love as a child. "Draco; I saw, I thought I saw... please Gin," he begged, "Please, where is Draco?"

"He's upstairs Harry" she said quietly and her eyes were flickering between his wild eyes and his fingers, caught up and curled around her jumper; his fingers were dark with blood but Dudley doubted if that was what she was noticing.

Harry seemed to fold up in confusion and his hair curled around his face like a curtain; the dark tendrils were tainted with the drying rust of blood that fell like red glitter around him as he shook his head. "But I saw... I thought I saw..."

"You saw him turn on us?" Ron demanded and there was something like ugly hope in voice that made Harry's eyes snap up cold and disgusted towards him.

"No. He wasn't on Voldemort's side." He corrected with a hiss, but there was still confusion and desperation overwhelming his face, even as the blood stopped flowing and dried against his face in a delicate tangle of darkening red lines like a lace veil.

"Well that's good to hear"

Dudley glanced as Draco appeared beside him in the doorway, jealously watching as Harry straightened at the sound of Draco's voice and scrambled away from the redheaded family, still shaking as he appeared before the slender form of the youth.

Draco's face tightening as the sight of Harry's bloodied features and his hand jerked slightly as he made to reach out for him, only his embarrassment and their old argument holding him back. "You get into a fight with a wall Potter?" he sneered but there was more worry than venom in his words and Dudley hated him so much for that.

"I thought... I saw you" Harry whispered, his voice only loud enough for the people outside of the kitchen to hear, "I saw you before Voldemort. I felt him torturing you. I heard you screaming"

Draco face was pale and his eyes flashed before he returned to his wall of cool emotionless. "I'm fine"

Harry suddenly threw his arms around the pale youth, capturing Draco's stiff body in the circle of his skinny, protective limbs and holding him as if he would break and Dudley had never felt such cold, painful jealousy as he did in that moment. He wanted to rip them apart, tear them to pieces and his jealousy flared into rage and hatred as he watched and his fists were pressed up against his mouth, holding back his angry words and screams.

Dudley felt himself stumbling backwards, unable to contain himself so close to them.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I thought you'd..." Harry whispered and his eyes were full of diamonds tears as he pressed his face into the crook of Draco's neck. The pale youth eyes flickered delicately to Harry's bowed head and he scowled at the watching redheads until they looked away, and placed his hands tentatively into the small of Harry's back, his fingers quickly coiling up into the loose folds of material that hung of his cousin's skinny frame.

"It wasn't me." Draco said fiercely and stared in Harry's desperate, dream filled eyed. "I'm fine, I'm here."

Harry gripped tighter and his mouth opened, moving frantically but all that came out were whispers of sound that didn't mean anything other than to express his relief.

Draco grinned at him; his razor sharp smirk softening to one that almost resembled something tender and pressed his thumb into the dried blood on Harry's face, smearing the redness until Harry's skin glowed pale gold. Dudley was scared as Harry caught sight of Draco's expression, his own smile full of brightness and emotion and something he didn't want to acknowledge but that made Hermione quickly start up a conversation with the rest of the redhead family until it overwhelmed Draco and Harry's whispered conversation.

"Draco... I..." their embrace become awkward and tense and Harry pulled away quickly, his cheeks flushed and eyes downcast but still full of stars and relief.

Dudley flinched away from them, knowing and uncertain of the next words and was so relieved by the angry bubbling pop that echoed around the house that he didn't even noticed at first as Snape's snarling voice called for Draco's attention.

Dudley didn't have time to move before Snape was framed, all black billowing clothes and hard eyes in the doorway. He seemed to melt and shrink as he caught sight of Draco's soft, smirking face. His frantic energy seeping out of him until there was only weariness and emotion.

"Draco..."

"Sev?" Draco frowned and stepped away from Harry, glancing over his shoulder at Harry's questioning face before approaching the flustered potions master. The man seemed to flinch away as the youth reached for him and his face was crinkled in frowns and tired wrinkles.

"Draco, I'm sorry. You're mother, she's with Voldemort" he whispered and Harry's breath caught audible enough for Dudley's gaze to shift momentarily to his quivering cousin.

"Draco" Harry started quietly and hesitantly reached for the silent youth, but Draco ignored him and stared up at Snape, his face hard and fragile as glass.

"They tortured her?" he whispered, "did she..."

Snape glanced over at Harry's blood smeared forehead and his eyebrows knotted in anger as if blaming the boy for the torture of Draco's mother. Dudley realised that the man wouldn't have told Draco if he could have helped it and wondered how Snape could be so cruel to one boy and so painfully kind to another.

"She's alive. Voldemort won't kill her"

Draco's mouth was gaping like a fish and for once all his witty, sneering replies were lost and Dudley was torn between almost sympathy and vindication at the boy's sudden weakness. He hated the boy and couldn't have cared less about his mother, but the idea of his own mum being hurt made his words of cruel mockery silent in his mouth and even if he wasn't able to express sympathy he wasn't able to do anything either.

It was probably about as kind as he got.

"Thank you for telling me" Draco said and his words echoed hollowly around the corridor as he left, his feet heavy on the first step.

Harry stared after him, his face twisted up in feeling, pain and empathy heavy across his features in an expression neither Dudley nor Draco could manage to feel. His hands were moving at his sides and he watched Draco's stiff back as he padded upstairs, desperate to follow but uncertain in their relationship.

"Mr Potter" Snape sneered and his anger smouldered hot enough, to have the dark haired boy twisting around to look at him.

"I didn't know" he whispered, "I'm sorry. I just... I didn't know"

Snape scowled at him and for a moment Dudley thought he would hit him, he didn't and in a way Dudley wished he had. "I suggest you try very hard not to hurt him anymore" and he gestured with a sharp nod at the creaking stairs.

Harry would have smiled at the man if he hadn't already been turning to the away desperately, his limbs still shaking with the force of his visions and his eyebrows low over his eyes in determination.

Dudley ignored the hard, dark stare that Snape gave him and pressed himself against the banister, hot and cold in his expectancy and fear.

"I doubt you will enjoy what you will find up there" Snape interrupted, his voice soft enough so that no one could understand him.

Dudley quaked at the words and curled his hands into fists at his side, unable to voice the need to follow his cousin, to know what he was doing, to stay in the light of Harry's goodness and emotion because he had nothing else. He didn't have words to express his tangled up mixture of need and obsession and jealously or the half cracked fantasy he was living in and the broken image of his fragile, perfect cousin.

He didn't have words but Snape's face was dark and smooth with knowledge, he shrugged one sharp shoulder before turning away and Dudley started up the stairs.

* * *

**Author's notes**

We're nearly there, one more chapter to go or at least that is the plan. I'm sorry for the exceptionally long wait for this guys; this chapter was a bitch to write. Thanks to Abby Ebon for the helpful comments. This chapter is unbeta'd but just go with it.

Hope you all had a nice christmas and speaking of food, I cooked and celebrated my first thanksgiving; for those who don't already know; don't start drinking until after the food is cooked. While it may make things a lot funnier, you will burn things and cause the firealarms to go off which will mean a total building evacuation and make everyone hate your flat just a little. But ignoring that, it was great, who knew pecan pie was so nice?

If you like the tv show superntaural, I have written a Supernatural/Harry Potter crossover which you may be intersted in.

Reviews are desperately wanted and needed.


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